2016 Région Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes Région Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes
Without making too much of the “projection”, it is with great pride that the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region can claim a strong tie – both intimate and historical – with the adventure of cinema, an adventure begun more than thirty-six thousand years ago at the Pont d’Arc cave in the département of Ardèche, to which we are so attached, a tie continuing with the invention of the cinematograph by the Lumière brothers in Lyon and which today makes of our great region a place that continues to love and support cinema.
Even though it has been illuminating the five continents for over a century, cinema is assuredly at home in Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, a state of things which owes much to the numerous rendez-vous which, like Lussas, contribute to the celebration of this art and the passion it inflames. As an event whose reputation extends far beyond our borders, the États généraux du film documentaire constitutes a highly singular place always lived in the plural.
A meeting point for the curious and impassioned, it is also necessarily a place of immersion, and at the same time a site of exploration for researchers and film buffs – the exploration of documentary practices and forms, the exploration of the image, its possibilities and limits – Lussas has won recognition as the face of cinema in movement, as a place of reflection on the production of images, on the evolution of our relationship to the image, on its capacity to remodel and rewrite the Real.
What languages cannot always translate, the cinema can, and that’s what makes it irreplaceable: a space opening onto ourselves, Lussas is also and finally a space opening up to the world for, at the end of the day, it is always the world that constitutes the ultimate horizon of film and cinema.
Thank you to Lussas for stimulating this appetite for discovery, and an excellent festival to every one of you.
Laurent Wauquiez
President of the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes Region