Published annually as a filmmakers forum, Faber's Projections reached its (disappointing) fourth edition on schedule earlier this year. But with 1995 recognised as film's hundredth anniversary, the Projections team have collaborated with Europe's best film magazine', Positif, as it reaches its edition 400, to occasion this extra, half-edition for this valuable series.

The concept is simple – approach international filmmakers to contribute a short piece on a director, film, actor, some aspect of film that speaks to them. A wide draft; a broad string of responses. Jean-Claude Brisseau writes of seeing Psycho 'perhaps fifty, sixty times'; Polanski's in awe of Carol Reed's Odd Man Out; Marcel Ophuls is most taken with James Stewart – 'the last of the good guys'; Mike Leigh on L'Albert degli Zoccoli; Patrice Leconte lets 'not a day' go by without thinking of Woody Allen; Krzystof Kieslowski lists his favourite ten films, explaining the one (The Sunday Musicians) we never heard of; the undervalued Monte Hellman writes enthusiastically about Victor Erice's extraordinary, meditative Spirit of the Beehive; Atom Egoyan on Pasolini; Schrader on Pickpocket. Chris Marker on Hitchcock's masterpiece, Vertigo, is most militant of all: 'do those who don't (know Vertigo by heart) deserve anything at all?' he asks. Probably not, as it happens.

Others are more liberal, more personal in their interpretation: Clint Eastwood is fascinating on the people that helped/influenced his career; Roger Corman writes affectionately about his late friend, Vincent Price; the Coen brothers contribute a funny essay on their favourite actor, Harry Bugin (never heard of him? watch their films); and co-editor Boorman explains a side to his friend Lee Marvin with which most will be unfamiliar.

Of course, you have to take the rough with the smooth, and some of these pieces make for dreary reading (Alain Resnais' in-jokery is particularly irritating; Ken Loach is typically pious, no matter how valid) but this is at least a well organised dip-in collection. Few will read everything, but everyone should read Peter Greenaway's  illuminating essay on film architecture.

The British editors have invited some names of their own as an addendum to the Positif collection, and it's these pages that hide some of the book's real jewels. Michael Almereyda's recollections of Derek Jarman are honest and affectionate; Richard Lowenstein's memoir of seeing Elvis in an Aboriginal cinema in the middle of the outback reads like a neat short story; Philip Ridley's paean to Close Encounters is literally a short story (previously seen in an Empire book of film writing), and a gem.

You'll agree with half of Projections 4½, and scream at the remainder. Scratch your head at the obsession with Buster Keaton. And wonder at why so many leading names in contemporary cinema seem to live in its dusty past. (Couldn't just one of them write on, say, Speed?) But if, like Dusan Makavejev, you think of 'life as a remake of movies' then there is much behind the gaudy silver cover to solicit attention and argument.