Henri Colpi

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Henri Colpi (15 July 1921 – 14 January 2006) was a French film editor and director. Born in Brigue, Switzerland, he studied at IDHEC, finishing in 1947. From 1950 to 1960 he edited films for notable French New Wave directors, including Agnès Varda and Georges Franju.

Colpi directed Une aussi longue absence (1961), which shared the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival with Luis Buñuel’s Viridiana. The film, written by Marguerite Duras, starred Alida Valli and had music by Georges Delerue; it also won the Louis Delluc Prize in 1960. His second feature, Codine (1963), competed at Cannes where he won Best Screenplay. As an editor, Colpi worked on about 20 films, including Alain Resnais’ Hiroshima mon amour (1959) and L’Année dernière à Marienbad (1961). He also edited André Antoine’s The Swallow and the Titmouse (L'Hirondelle et la Mésange), a 79-minute film released in 1984 from six hours of footage. Beyond directing and editing, he did acting and sound recording, and he appeared in a 1974 French TV series about the history of French cinema. Colpi continued working into the 1990s and died in Menton, France, at age 84.