catalogue 2007 en .pdf - Festival international du documentaire de ...

CÉDITORIALEighteenth Festival, eighteenth year. A coming of age? The age of responsibility andfreedom? While the International Documentary Film Festival of Marseille has not waitedfor this anniversary to find new things to do, it is nevertheless true that the event is todaytaking a new direction. Documentary films in competition from now on will be mixedtogether with fiction films from around the world. It is a slight modification in numberrather than quality but it is decisive nonetheless. Why take this step? When generalistfestivals are increasingly including documentaries in their selections, we are choosing toreverse this tendency: it is our turn to welcome fiction, fully and entirely. It is a way ofreaffirming the vigour of the documentary film, which does not need a reserved area toindicate its importance, and it does not give a hoot about boundaries to designate whatit widely disseminates, and often for the better. To situate the question on a moretheoretical level, never have we found the opposition between the real and the inventedto be fruitful for considering the differences between documentary and fiction. There isin each of these genres – when they are worthy, that is to say worthy of reality –something authentic and fabulous, constrained and free and laboured and graceful. Howthis balance is combined to create a work that may cross over time and bear testimonyof that rare thing that we call an event is all that counts.Pedro Costa’s work exemplifies a similar requirement and we are presenting aretrospective of it in his presence, accompanied by a “carte blanche” programme madeup of some of his favourite films. His career, as we know, has always moved towardspurity. Gradually removing the meanders from the scenario, his films concentrate onsituations, gestures, and accidents of monumental proportions as his recent full-lengthfilm, En avant jeunesse!, amply shows.There are four other screens running parallel to the programme. The exclamation markafter Presto! means that these films, where music dictates to the gaze, manage totransmit an injection of beautiful insolence, that of jazz, rock, world music and contemporarymusic, and that which we often classify too rapidly as classical. Film, she said willbring together works in which the gaze takes the form of a female rebellion – withoutgesticulation, but certainly radical. Current fiction from across the Rhine will be presentedby representatives of young German cinema in collaboration with the Festival of Tübingenand the critical review Revolver. And finally, the “Paths” screen, which was successfullyintroduced last year, led by Fotokino, will again be running its open programme aimed atchildren. There are more than a hundred films in total, mostly previously unseen in France,without forgetting the numerous world and international premieres. There are more thantwenty film debuts out of the thirty-seven in competition that will rejuvenate our gaze. Theywill feed the numerous screenings that will take place at the Criée Theatre, at the Variétés,at the CRDP and at the BMVR of the Alcazar.Jean-Pierre RehmFestival Director054