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Susan King interviewed director Barbet Schroeder on the eve of his American Cinematheque tribute, MINING DIAMONDS: THE FILMS OF BARBET SCHROEDER , at the Aero Theatre in Santa Monica, July 28-30, 2017. Over the years, several foreign film directors such as France’s Patrice LeConte ( Monsieur Hire ) have told me they turned down offers to work in Hollywood for fear they would be giving up the freedom they have as a filmmaker in their country. But that was not the case for Barbet Schroeder, the Swiss-German, Iranian-born filmmaker of such documentary and narrative features as 1974’s General Idi Amin Dada ,  1975’s Maitresse and 1990’s Reversal of Fortune . When he came to the U.S. to make the acclaimed 1987 Barfly , poet/author Charles Bukowski’s semi-autobiographical drama, it was a dream come true. “I always admired American movies,” said Schroeder, 75. “When I came to America, the cinema was in bad shape, [but] there were still movies that wanted to be made by studios. I was l...