One of the leading themes in the films of the French director Olivier Assayas is celebrity: being close to it, living with it, seeing it in ordinary situations. His last film, Personal Shopper, has a real Hollywood star (Kristen Stewart) playing a personal shopper for a European movie star. His film before that, The Clouds of Sils Maria, has the same Stewart playing a personal assistant to Juliette Binoche (a real European movie star playing a European movie star).

In Irma Vep—which was made just over 20 years ago, and is presented as a a 35mm print by Northwest Film Forum this weekend—a real Hong Kong movie star, Maggie Cheung, plays a Hong Kong movie star who is hired by a French director to play the lead role in a remake of the French silent-era classic Les Vampires. Assayas never dives deep into the magic of celebrity, but he knows that the masses are more interested in being near to its power than understanding it.

For more information on this screening, see Movie Times.