Retour
Olivier Pagani
2003 - 19 min - Digital vidéo - Couleur - France
Madeleine, 77 years old, a tiny light in the total dark is her entire field of vision. Madeleine’s flat, on the last floor of a tower block built on the edge of town.
Sitting at her table, she recounts her life. Upright, her life, always upright. Mother Courage. It’s the story of an encounter. An encounter with history, which can be told, which has found the right words after much searching. A portrait of words. Daily life, her victories big and small to get herself out of the traps of the world of the sighted and the wary looks of people.
Alone, among her objects. House plants are everywhere, two pots on a folder, mute photographs the frames of which speak to her, objects of her interior, keepers of her history, material memory of what remains, around which her words gravitate. Madeleine speaks of the domestic slavery of her childhood, the cruelty of her family, for whom her existence was only worth anything in the shadow of others.
Her release, her marriage, the second half of her life, that she decided to live in her own way, with the man who had the courage of his love and that she loved. The woman who was dispossessed of her childhood relates her desire for children and life which has to be transmitted urgently. An urgency which is expressed in a patience which pushes her forward, towards the child. She talks about her own and those of others, she relates how she brought up and raised up all those who came within her reach. A hazy child animated by her desire to live and to give life.