2018 La Scam Day La Scam Day
“Standing up”. Standing up and dancing.
It is with this drive that La Scam (French Civil Society of Multimedia Authors) will be present alongside the team at Lussas for this thirtieth edition. Two moments of presence: on Thursday August 23, you will be invited to discover six films having received funding from the “Brouillon d’un rêve” development bursary, all finished since the last edition of the festival; and on Friday August 24, daylight will fall and night will rise under the stars of Saint-Laurent-sous-Coiron on this year’s “Nuit de la radio”.[1]
La Scam will mark in its own way Lussas’ thirtieth anniversary, celebrating the act of filming as an infinite act of love and resistance, this irreplaceable vital power of the voices that vibrate through documentary film. To have an idea, a dream of a film is already a kind of celebration in itself. The projects dreamt of, feverishly submitted all year long by film writers, have become free works of creation, eulogies to the simplicity there can be in looking and paying attention to the Other, to proximity, transgression, anger, and the metamorphosis of one’s self.
Some of these authors have pulled out their long view and transported us from the salt of deserts to the ice of Russia, from the Amazon to the United States, or to the heart of turbulence in an old quarter of Valencia. Others have stayed put, telling us of their “here and now”. It is in this refined and virtuoso risk-taking that we have chosen to situate ourselves, in the middle of these worlds and realities entirely inhabited by the filmmakers. Is there in the end any more stimulating audacity? Films, and much more than films, which move ahead to the sound of beating drums, creating unique forms, weaving together the poetic and the political, the exterior and interior, the near and the far, the weight of the state of the world and the delicacy of relations. Some of these works cut like knives, forcing the world to face facts with a palpable sense of urgency. Others “whisper” or dance the essence of things in order to “avoid having to shout”, overcoming the Real, acting on the Real.
“Big dreamers profess the world’s intimacy.”[2] These are the dreams of the Real that have become works of Art, active and irreplaceable, like budding universes, emancipating, around which we come together each summer for these last thirty years. It is around these works, around the time to dream them and the right for their authors to create them, that the Scam mobilizes day after day. It is the freedom and possibility for each author to live this art of documentary that we defend.
Filming to “starve the spectator” said André S. Labarthe. This appetite is what we hope to share once again this summer.
Thirty years ring out, abound with memories, traces, commitments around this shared appetite, this powerful connection between Lussas and La Scam. The Tënk platform, the Cinemathèque du documentaire, these utopias have been embodied. It is time to see a building set in motion. That’s worth a party.
Julie Bertuccelli
[1] “Daylight falls, the night rises”, a sound programme compiled by Karine Le Bail to be listened to collectively. A La Scam event in partnership with Ina and Radio France. Attention: pre-registration is obligatory at the public reception area of the festival, limited number of places. Free shuttle buses from the Place de l’église, Lussas: 7:15, 7:45, 8:00 and 8:30 pm.
[2] Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space.
Debates in the presence of the directors.