Although French film director Francois Truffaut is no longer with us, his movies and vision as a director are the focus of the September cinematheque series at the Wexner Center.Many people may remember the image of Truffaut as the French scientist who tried to break down the communication barrier between humans and aliens in Steven Spielberg’s 1977 science fiction classic, “Close Encounters of the Third Kind.”But Truffaut, who died in 1984, was renowned as one of the most influential foreign film directors of his time. David Filipi, associate curator of films and video at the Wexner Center, said that Truffaut was almost as well received by American audiences as he was in his own country.”Truffaut was an incredibly well known film director,” Filipi said. “His popularity varied from film to film.” Truffaut’s work is unique because he often borrowed techniques used by other directors like Alfred Hitchcock, and expanded on them, putting his own signature on already popular directing strategies.In the movie “Fahrenheit 451,” based on Ray Bradbury’s book by the same name, Truffaut gave the screenplay a kind of human detachment that is reminiscent of Aldous Huxley’s book “Brave New World,” where people are dependent on anti-depressant drugs whenever they have a bad day. “Fahrenheit 451″ is a fictional story set in the not-too-distant future when governments have made it illegal to own or read books. Truffaut used long takes on single characters or scenes to give the movie a surreal effect. The people appear to be antisocial and alone, within themselves, probably because of the martial law censorship they have been forced into. Truffaut’s films usually reflect his own experiences, which were often dark and abusive.”Any good filmmaker is going to draw on his or her personal experiences,” Filipi said. “Truffaut’s films are incredibly personal.” Filipi said that Truffaut’s childhood was tainted because he was born right before his parents were divorced, and his mother and her new husband, from whom Truffaut got his name, showed little interest in him, leaving him in the care of a wet nurse until he was almost 3. The theme of a troubled childhood is the subject of many of Truffaut’s films, most notably his 1959 directorial debut, “The 400 Blows,” which won him best director at the Cannes Film Festival. But later Truffaut showed optimism toward the struggles of childhood in his film, “Small Change,” in which a class of French school children in a small rural village cope with the day-to-day dilemmas of their increasingly complex lives as they finish one grade of school and move on to the next. The film series will run from Sept. 9 to 30 and will include nine of his most popular films.