Ve Francis

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Belgian actress and film-maker who spent most of her career in France. She became closely associated with the writer Paul Claudel, and she was married to the critic and film-maker Louis Delluc. Her career as a film actress developed from 1914 onwards, but in 1918 she made the first of several films with Germaine Dulac and became firmly linked with the avant-garde directors who contributed to the movement sometimes called impressionist cinema. When Louis Delluc turned to directing his own films in 1920, Ève Francis took the leading role in almost all of them, including La Femme de nulle part (1922) and L'Inondation (1924). She had one of her greatest successes in Marcel L'Herbier's El Dorado (1921) in which she played the ill-fated cabaret dancer Sibilla. During the 1930s she worked regularly as an assistant director with Marcel L'Herbier as well as giving lectures and writing film criticism. Ève Francis published two books of her own, Temps héroïques: théâtre, cinéma (Gand: Enseigne du chat qui pêche, 1949), with a preface by Paul Claudel, including her portrait of Louis Delluc; and her recollections of Claudel himself in Un autre Claudel (Paris: Grasset, 1973). After making two final screen appearances when in her late 80s, she died at Neuilly-sur-Seine on the outskirts of Paris on 6 December 1980 at the age of 94. Link to Wikipedia biography