2018 Docmonde Docmonde
If each film in the “Docmonde” selection is a way of looking at the world, a view of the world, observed from within, each film is also a world in itself. The directors of these films have meticulously sketched out a territory, a space which is the focus of their gaze. At each stage of creation, the question of boundaries is raised: mark the milestones during writing, circumscribe a space during the shoot, construct during the edit…
But let’s remember the rules of the game: in this selection, the films that you will discover have emerged from the training programmes in documentary filmmaking organized by different structures of the Lussas Village documentaire: the Master’s degree and residences of the Documentary School, the writing residences of Africadoc, Eurasiadoc and Doc Océan Indien. Even if this programme presents for the most part first films, you can already sense the personality of writer-filmmakers anxious to share what they observe from their particular place in society. Each one plunges us into their world by creating the keys that allow us as spectators to understand it. The forms they use reveal the wide range of possibilities within documentary film. Making acquaintance with these films is also to make acquaintance with their authors and the universes of their creation, and these two days of programme will highlight and leave ample space for discussion.
When we watch these films, worlds open up to us: the forgotten lands of the Gâtinais, dark and nocturnal, explored by a group of young men (Until the Dawning of the Day by Pierre Tonachella); again the night in Libreville, this time enveloping Christ, a boxer who is witness to the way his country is changing (Boxing Libreville by Amédée Pacôme Nkoulou); a little Georgian village next, on the frontier with the Chechen Republic where Iman and Eva, two sparkling and curious girls, are growing up amid a Muslim radicalism that already darkens their future (Before Father Gets Back by Mari Gulbani); the lava of the volcanos, the beauty and asperity of Reunion Island where the creole language of Fonkeur poets reveals the diversity of cultures that makes up the history of the Island (From The Depths of My Heart by Sophie Louÿs); elsewhere the muffled cocoon of a master engraver’s workshop, a few yards from Maidan Square, where time seems suspended in Kiev (Cursed Days by Artem Iuchenko); further on, the streets of Bujumbura where violence following the demonstrations against the proposed third term of Burundi’s president in 2015 forced the filmmaker to leave his family, faced with the acuity of his images (Uncertain Future by Eddy Munyaneza)…
By viewing these films together, obvious connections quickly stand out, whether in formal methods or in the themes confronted. And this is truly what is offered by this selection of films: from one continent to the other, to embrace the world in its plurality, in its vastest diversity. An immobile journey attentive to the murmurs of the world, without moving from the little islet that is the village of Lussas, each year for the past thirty during the week-long États généraux du film documentaire.
Madeline Robert
“A film made with them to dig into what is rumbling within the forsaken margins of a territory.”
Pierre Tonachella, on Until the Dawning of the Day.
“I quickly felt the absolute necessity to continue filming the reality of what was happening within my country to transmit it to the world.”
Eddy Munyaneza
“What interests me is to explore what is at the bottom of our heart and guts.”
Sophie Louÿs
“With this film, I hope to inscribe this event and the people who experienced it within a wider history than that of the immediate narrative proposed by news images.”
Artem Iurchenko, on Cursed Days
Debates led by Madeline Robert.
In the presence of the directors and/or producers.