2013 Direction régionale des affaires culturelles Rhône-Alpes Direction régionale des affaires culturelles Rhône-Alpes
Since their creation in 1989, the États généraux du film documentaire have progressively become an indispensable event for the impassioned public and professionals devoted to this form of cinematographic and audiovisual creation.
By its rich and diverse programming, a mix of seminars, workshops, professional panels and of course screenings of documentary films, this festival proposes, not a competitive selection marked by a final distribution of awards, but rather an opening-out to images whose sole aim is to cause us to question anew our relation to the world and its representations. In this reflection, the authors' commitment as expressed in their choices of direction is a vital stimulant for us, in line with the famous expression coined by Jean Vigo who defined documentary as "a documented point of view".
The États généraux du film documentaire fully participate in this ambition, offering us each year a varied selection of singular and audacious documentary films strong enough to shake up at once our way of looking and the very aesthetics of the documentary genre, interrogating its history and its future. The programme of this 25th edition follows in this prestigious tradition, as exemplified by the seminars – Philosophical Viewpoints and The way of images, or the screenings organised in the Africa or Doc Route sections.
In a society where we are more than ever surrounded by images, the États généraux du film documentaire sharpen our capacity to analyze what is shown to us. Let us be guided in this direction so as to become ever more vigilant spectators of the projected image and ever more enlightened citizens of the world.
Jean-François Marguerin