Alain Fleischer is a filmmaker, writer, artist and photographer. Under the aegis of France's Ministry of Culture he set up and currently directs Le Fresnoy, the national studio for contemporary arts. After studying literature, linguistics, semiology and anthropology at the Sorbonne and the Ecole des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS), Alain Fleischer taught at the University of Paris III, the University of Quebec in Montreal and various schools of art, photography and cinema. He has made some 140 films in a range including feature-length fictions, experimental cinema and art documentaries. His films have been shown at many international festivals and there have been six retrospectives of his cinema oeuvre, notably in Paris, New York and Montreal. His work as artist and photographer has been regularly exhibited in solo and group exhibitions in galleries and museums in France and abroad: at the Maison Européenne de la Photographie and the Centre Pompidou in Paris, and in Moscow, Canton and elsewhere. The author of some twenty books, Alain Fleischer has of late been focusing increasingly on his work as a writer.