With Krzysztof Kieslowski's death in 1995, on the hundredth anniversary of cinema, is it all over? Have the earth-shattering movies all been made? Is what's left just special effects and merchandising (Hollywood), tiny humanist tales from minor filmmakers (American indies), and a Shakespeare-to-Jane-Austen factory of safe literary adaptations (art movies)? And where are the demanding audiences, if the old folks sit home exhausted with their kids and TVs while the young abhor subtitles and seem perfectly content with Tarantino, John Woo, and Mission: Impossible?

At Greece's recent Thessaloniki Film Festival, I was privy to engrossing discussions by two of the world's most important filmmakers, Britain's Peter Greenaway and Italy's Bernardo Bertolucci, both in their 50s, who see the celluloid crisis in drastically opposite ways.

"I don't go to cinema. I find it very boring, very repetitive," Greenaway said. He's thrilled, and not sentimental at all, about moviedom's melting into TV and new technologies. "Concerning cinema, I like it a lot," said Bertolucci, who grew up adulating the French New Wave and classic Hollywood. Now he's completely depressed about the postmodernist collapse of things.

Bertolucci went on, "I was in LA 20 days ago, the capital of the empire that colonized us. And Hollywood has never been so low in quality, and the desire for quality. But after three or four days, I could forget, because cinema there seems to be working so well, and everyone is making films."

Then he remembered the world outside. "I was really sad. In Europe, cinema is slipping into a coma state. And maybe I should install cable directly in my vein to understand what television is. Maybe then I'll come to television to express myself, but what a pain!"

The Last Tango in Paris filmmaker explained that he made the Liv Tyler-starring Stealing Beauty as a way to make contact with younger audiences. "I'm not judging, but I look at them as aliens. I find them so different from when I was growing up, something hormonal."

Bertolucci's poet father told him family history, introduced him to literature, took him to John Ford movies. Today's parents and teachers are failing, he feels, to convey their culture to the younger generations. "I wish to make a film about 1968 because people 18 or 19 know nothing about what was the most exciting time of our lives. It's a black hole. We're not able to tell of that period because maybe we feel it was a negative thing, but it brought many important changes. In Italy, for instance, abortion was forbidden before 1972."

What's horrible today? Bertolucci keeps harking back to television. "What I like about cinema, when we're together in the dark, it's like dreaming with the eyes open. But Fellini said that television, like rain, snow, wind, is now a natural fact. And Pasolini thought that every seven years we should have one year of blackout from TV. I think he was right."

Wrong, says Peter Greenaway, whose newest film, The Pillow Book, uses multiple screens, merging-and-sliding images, and happily emulates the chameleon pictorials of MTV. "When the Nintendo generation gets its hands on cinema, they'll get hold of what people need. A cinema based on narrative will disappear: the Casablanca syndrome will be part of the past! The frame? You don't need it! CD-ROMs work laterally, not linearally, and that's what we want. What we've seen so far is text before image, whether we're talking Spielberg or Godard. But with new technologies, cinema will leap off and drop its diapers!"

Greenaway considers videomaker Bill Viola "worth 10 Scorseses." He does admit to a fondness for a few of today's filmmakers: Wenders, Lynch, Cronenberg, Atom Egoyen. "But I'm far better satisfied going to a football match."

I asked about a recent Boston interview in which Mike Leigh said that Greenaway is a fan of his. "I do not like Mike Leigh," Greenaway answered, a twinkle coming into his eye at the chance to be a provocateur. "Leigh's naturalist tradition is a waste of time, as is his parochial politics. If you want to preach politics, be a Jesuit!"

A LEAP OF FAITH is a documentary (with voice-over by Liam Neeson) chronicling the first days in 1993 of an "integrated" elementary school in war-shredded Belfast. "Integrated" in this context means a place for both Protestant and Catholic children; and it's a stirring story of good-willed parents and strong-willed school administrators bucking the predominant hatreds. As of the filming, 24 integrated schools existed in Northern Ireland, which means that one or two percent of the children had the chance to meet their Christian opposites.

But why is A Leap of Faith playing on screen December 6 at the Coolidge Corner? Shot no-frills on video, it was obviously conceived by Americans Jennifer McShane and Tricia Regan for public TV.