Every day in Paris can seem like a film festival, with a clutch of cinemas devoted to retrospective screenings from John Cassavettes to John Carpenter to John Ford (plus dozens of directors whose names aren’t John, of course). No surprise that when La Cinémathèque Française, Paris’s crown jewel of film history, hosts a festival dedicated to retrospective and restored cinema, it goes all out.

Toute la Mémoire du Monde occurs over five days, but that’s the only thing that’s small about it, with over 100 films on offer spread over several venues across town. There’s also a parrain du festival, a celebrated guest of honor. This year: Nicolas Winding Refn, presenting some of his own films, some films he loves, and a selection of films from his streaming site byNWR. Other guests included directors Jerzy Skolimowski and James Ivory, cinematographer Stephen Goldblatt, and several film historians.

The festival screens films every film fan knows (Lights Out In Europe. Only a couple dozen die-hard cineastes showed up for those vintage picks, but when it came to the guest of honor, Paris turned out in force.

Fat City turns out to be the first film Refn re seeing (a well loved 35mm print complete with burned-in French subtitles). He marginally spoiled his 13-hour Amazon streaming series, Too Old To Die Young, by revealing that he and director of photography Darius Khondji were both fans of Fat City and decided to steal the ending for their series. (It’s not really a spoiler, as Fat City ends on a marvellously ambiguous note. And never mind the name; for anyone who loves boxing films or American 70s cinema, Fat City is up there with the best in either category.)

Brown.

Another 70s American gem screening at the festival was Hal Ashby’s biography of Woody Guthrie, Hal, last year’s documentary on the director, and discovered that Bound for Glory contained the very first Steadicam shot. (It’s a common misconception that The Shining holds this honor; one courageux French audience member interrupted Brown’s opening to attempt to correct him on this point.)

If you haven’t seen the Steadicam shot that opens Bound For Glory, it’s astonishing—a three-minute take that begins on a crane, descends through a crowd, follows David Carradine through that crowd, and then back. It’s the sort of shot that helped win Haskell Wexler an Oscar for cinematography (not to discount his work on the rest of the film, obviously).

Anyway, if you can ever see Brown speak, do so. He’s a garrulous man, generous and proud at the same time, and his masterclass was the highlight of the weekend. Over an hour and a half, he chronicled how he moved from folk singer to industrial filmmaker to inventor to being the man responsible for some of cinema’s most iconic shots. I’ve included some of his stories in this list of Brown’s picks for most iconic Steadicam shots.

It’s interesting to note that Brown isn’t a fan of long takes for the sake of them, often highlighting how they can be used more effectively edited with other shots. He’s also not a fan of handheld. In his opinion, Children of Men’s famous handheld work unnecessarily calls attention to itself and suggests the presence of a person, taking away the immediacy from the characters.

Stories like that do nothing to reduce Jodorowsky’s mystical reputation, but wearing an aged sweater while standing next to the suit-wearing Refn, he seemed charmingly down-to-Earth, making fun of Refn’s capitalist ways and discussing his recently completed new movie, Psychomagic. At 90 years old, he shows few signs of diminishing.

Refn says he made Jodorowsky promise he’d be around to 150 so they can be friends when he’s 100. We wouldn’t rule it out.

Varda.

Letterboxd would like to take this moment to note the ing of celebrated French filmmaker Agnès Varda. If you are in or near Paris on Tuesday 2 April, La Cinémathèque Française will host a tribute to her life and career from 11:00am (her funeral will take place the same day, at Cimetière du Montparnasse, at 2:00pm). French speakers will enjoy this Varda masterclass, filmed just last year.

Repose en paix, Agnès.

Hot tip № 1: If you’re going to Paris to see movies, the Latin Quarter is the place to stay, with several of its most devoted repertory cinemas clustered together. Hot tip № 2: Check out this evolving list of chronological French cinema.