The Documentary Film School

A proposal from SRF
(Société des réalisatrices et réalisateurs de films)

THE REAL PUT TO THE TEST
– stagings, devices, reconstructions, reconstitutions and fictions

Beyond the simple capture or use of devices in which it is sometimes confined, could we say, taking our inspiration from Francis Bacon’s definition that painting is “setting a trap to catch the living”[i], that documentary directing consists of setting traps to catch the real?

For the documentary ‘continent’, that ‘other of cinema'[ii], the impure art par excellence in the words of André Bazin, is a place teeming with all manner of filmic possibilities and gestures: from clean lines to skilful hybridisations, the relationship with reality is constantly renewed, reinterrogated, challenged and evaded.

Drawing on very real experiences, and as close as possible to the making of the films of each and every one of us, this discussion will attempt to pinpoint a few paths – cross-cutting ones, as it should be – with the compass or the vanishing line of concern for what remains fragile and uncertain in us, that is to say, for what resists in spite of everything, what pulsates in secret: the truth of the living.

[i] (In interviews with David Sylvester)
[ii]  Jean Breschand, L’Autre cinéma.

In the presence of the filmmakers:

• Christophe Cognet
— Parce que j’étais peintre, l’art rescapé des camps nazis, 2013
— À pas aveugles, 2021
• Nicolas Klotz
— La Blessure, 2004
— Low Life, 2011
— L’Héroïque Lande, la frontière brûle (coréalisatrice : Élisabeth Perceval), 2018
— Quand la maison brûle (coréalisatrice : Élisabeth Perceval), 2022
• Isabelle Ingold
— Des jours et des nuits sur l’aire, 2016
— Ailleurs, partout (coréalisatrice : Vivianne Perelmuter), 2020
• Vivianne Perelmuter
— Le Vertige des possibles, 2014
— Ailleurs, partout (coréalisatrice : Isabelle Ingold), 2020
• Marie Dumora
— Belinda, 2017
— Forbach Swing, 2019
— Loin de vous j’ai grandi, 2020