les Ateliers Varan

“Direct cinema” is the quintessential tool at our disposal for helping people understand what the language of documentary film is, what the staging of reality entails, what brings it closer to fiction while blurring the boundaries between genres, what best raises questions, and what is inexhaustible in the variety and complexity of its narrative forms – Abbas Kiarostami’s *Close-Up* provides a masterful example of this – what is the strongest guarantee of accuracy and depth, the most subversive, and what “bears witness” to the poetic depths of every human being; but also that which relegates to the realm of childishness the “edgy” (the new buzzword) – in reality, hysterical – tactics of the most wretched television programming, which shames us all with its oversimplifications, stereotypes, caricatures, and clichés of every kind; that which withstands the test of time through the durations inherent to situations (upstream, downstream), defying the fury of utilitarianism; that which restores dignity to this “game” of all existence, with its contradictions and paradoxes, restoring to it all its complexity.

Far from the principle of the interview and the illustration of a voice-over commentary, we will seek together to draw out from the situations themselves a certain intense poetry: this is the very principle of “direct cinema.”

It is often out of default or mental laziness that the interview resurfaces, serving as a stopgap for weak subjects, an inability to move toward staging, or a lack of trust in “the other” being filmed.

“Reality” is nothing more than indecipherable chaos unless it is interpreted, edited, and staged from a particular perspective: it is this process – which often involves a sort of reversal, a cultural revolution – that we will strive to experiment with.

Contrary to all conventional wisdom, a documentary can in no way be a copy of reality: it is a subjective editing of reality; and objectivity, often held in high regard, is nothing but a fallacious vanity.

Conversely, before asserting a style and venturing onto the precipices of formal risk, it is wise to humbly experiment with this first journey through the looking glass, of which direct cinema is the crowning achievement, leaving us with masterpieces that enrich our humanity.

Marie-Claude Treilhou

Marie-Claude Treilhou Director