2018 Viewing experiences Viewing experiences
Alea jacta est. Not without regret, frustration and other inconveniences involved in our mission as programmers, at long last has the jungle of Docfilmdepot been cut through, the changing scene of documentary (nearly a thousand films) captured in its joyful complexity, its stimulating diversity and its constants. Here we are, then, like the curators of a contemporary art show, proud, scared to death and impatient to present once again at Lussas, the substantive essence of this great magma of production, as fascinating as it is disconcerting, pre-filtered by a pre-selection team, and then by our intertwined subjectivities and the contingencies, sometimes unforgiving, of a festival programme...
For as we know, it is absolutely not just a case of affirming some arbitrary “I like/I don't like”, but rather of letting oneself be transported by the impressive wave of a year’s francophone documentary production, striving to hang on to a concerted critical sense as well as the indispensable faculty of allowing oneself to be surprised. From film to film, nonetheless, trends can be discerned.
Short films prove to be less confined than longer films in terms of formal freedom. This year, filmmakers seem to want to question their language, probably in order to respond more clearly to the world, to its actuality, its emergencies. We often had to admit, whether it be the work of students, recognized authors, or outsiders arriving from the art world, that there was a worthy attempt to adjust documentary to its new digital condition. Whereas the ethical urgency of testimony was more important than the political conditions of its formulation, everything has shifted a little.
If there is a place to bring up these fundamental questions about our cinematic forms, it is the États généraux du film documentaire. And precisely – that is what is intriguing – this vast questioning of documentary in our totally digital age (in terms of lengths, strategies, formats, legitimacy or relation to fiction), far from disqualifying its value as criticism and denunciation of the Real’s flesh wounds, rather paints an almost more affirmatively stated, concerted, and sharable political horizon, being finally conscious of its means, its new ways of reaching the public, its reactive power and impact.
So, while remaining a promenade into the hidden corners of the world, with the sounds and languages of other lives than ours, “Viewing experiences” will also be, we hope, the place where the artistic, poetic and political issues of the cinema we defend will be discussed, where the ways of looking defined by filmmakers will be woven with spectator experiences. In the hurly burly of contemporary documentary, as fundamentally dense as it is tenderly scattered, one thing is certain (and this is both worrying and reassuring for programmers/filmmakers like ourselves): the death of cinema is not scheduled for this summer. You will observe with us its unquiet vivacity, its renewed beauty at Lussas, beneath the plane trees.
Dominique Auvray and Vincent Dieutre
Debates led by Dominique Auvray and Vincent Dieutre.
In the presence of the directors and/or producers.