What happens with 1,800 cassettes or DVDs… never think you know, accept that you will be wrong-footed, bustled from the side, overwhelmed. Know when to overlook, and open your eyes. Just follow the story and forget the rest. Be happy that there is no story. Enjoy not understanding everything, and feel that you end up a little wiser. Recount a scene, or a shot, to others, fifty times in the course of a week. Think about other films, and see them again. Delve into books, speak to those who know more. Trust boredom and patience. See the tricks, the rhetoric, the virtual editing keyboard ousting the editing, the spoken words jumping sync/off, click, clack. Watch the integration of dominant codes at work, and notice when they are exceeded. Watch the scene drag on, against all common sense, and mistrust common sense. See the films as they are, and as they are made. The meagre resources of disaster stricken countries, the pressure to conform in the rich countries, the fierce need not to conform. Imagine the film theatre, the darkness, the screen. And 1,800 cassettes and DVDs later, know that, in the end, there is no “state of affairs”, no statement, no manifesto. The time has now come to look at the ephemeral landscape that the programme has composed, and see there the anxiety of a world that is as complex as its masters say it is simple. See history (and the history of cinema) at work to re-establish links, to make the present more legible, to let childhood speak again. See the documentary make tangible all that is fleeting, interior, distant, unfinished and moving. And, finally, rely on the Cinéma du réel’s sensitive audience to recompose the whole.
Marie-Pierre Duhamel-Muller
Head of Programming
Cinéma du réel catalogue 2006