2006 Pieces of an opus : Pierre-Yves Vandeweerd Pieces of an opus : Pierre-Yves Vandeweerd
On the subject of my trajectory as a cineast
"I think, today more than in the past, that the act of making a documentary is not commonplace in the sense that the human experience on which it is based leaves nobody unscathed: neither the cineast, nor the person she or he films, nor the spectator. This "art of transformation" requires for each film the assumption of a certain risk, a putting in danger of the cineast, the people filmed and the spectators also. To what extent are we ready to let ourselves be carried off in the dream of another? To what extent does this other who looks at us permit us to recognize ourselves in the image they make of us and they offer us to share?
I think that "filming the Real" implies more than ever for the cineast the necessity to find her or his place in the filmmaking machinery and to assume a particular role from one end to the other of the narrative. It is not the best position, in the sense that it might be the one that most boosts the cineast’s ego. But the right place in the cinematic process: the one that makes sense because it allows another circulation of thought among the characters of the film, the spectators and the cineast. The "place of a transmitter of ideas", information, experience which really gives each one the freedom to find her or his own status in the film or based on the film, and to react and/or to act on the questions that it raises.
I made these four films in the regions of the Sahel and the Sahara over the past ten years. Even though they are very different in the way they are written, they are the prolongations of each other. Each one feeds off the experience of those that preceded it. In this sense, these films are the reflection of my trajectory as a cineast of the Real."
Pierre-Yves Vandeweerd
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