2018 Editorial Editorial
Thirtieth edition of the États généraux du film documentaire!
Time has passed quickly all along this obstinate and impassioned commitment in the service of documentary film. Other improbable projects have appeared over the years, borne by the energy and conviction of the people who have followed one another in the teams that today constitute the documentary village. We have held firm and we persevere in maintaining the spirit of Lussas. Isn’t it what this event is about: coming together, to confront the Real of the films and their projection, to sense “the unquiet vivacity [of cinema], its renewed beauty […], beneath the plane trees”, as some people say, or to see “the surrounding fields like a fragmented film, yes, but a film in spite of everything, totally, tenderly, tragically”, says another?
More than a commemoration, what we are celebrating without formality is this longevity and this investment alongside spectators, professionals and our partners. Even while turning our eyes to the past for an instant, to remember the paths taken, we remain anchored in the present by continuing our work of research and proposal that accompanies the movement of films.
With a look both retrospective and contemporary, we question the permanence of a form during the seminar “Direct cinema – still possible?”; a question that, even before the start of its exploration, has provoked numerous reactions. In a parallel programme, you can hear: “Direct cinema and the refusal of ideological voice-overs became their common strategies.” If the programmes of “Doc history” and “Doc route” deal with countries that no longer exist, it is indeed beyond borders, without brushing history aside but perhaps by confronting it differently and certainly via cinema: “Will we finally imagine ourselves and our imaginary place in the present? Will we finally meet the present, and talk to the present?”
“I’m just on the lookout”, a filmmaker says to mark an attention, a vigilance, the imminence of seeing and hearing. We have also imagined a singular journey entitled “On the point of seeing”; inspired by an expression borrowed from Fernand Deligny, “the point of seeing”, which through the use of a verb rather than a noun, designates the active, engaged part in the act of seeing. We have invited films and people – regular ones and new ones – and with them will unroll the recounting of a film, a staging of the stories of spectators, thought(s), a vocal, poetic and ethnographic crossing, silences, to listen to the words of one and the other, “we must construct the time to listen and allow the expression of the words of all those who are without voice”.
The spirit of Lussas is also a feeling of being together, of assembling our forces and our spirits. Discussions light up in the darkness of the screening rooms, carry on under the fiery sunlight of Ardèche in the summer. By encouraging you to confide your visions as spectators “on the point of seeing”, the figure already sketched out in what has reached us from “Public construction site”, and an aspect we know well, is the extent to which each individual creates their own Lussas, just as they create their own cinema.
And to wrap up, we won’t forget to joyfully celebrate this thirtieth edition with an exceptional closing night where we will give way to the Grand Ball, by moving from one field to another…
Pascale Paulat and Christophe Postic