Un Film Dramatique
For four years, Éric Baudelaire regularly met with students from the film group at Dora Maar middle school in Saint-Denis. Time for them to grow together, time to find the form of a film in which they would be the true subjects: its characters, its authors and its promise.
About the film
What are we doing together? A recurring question for the students of the film group at Dora Maar middle school, and for Éric Baudelaire who worked with them over their four years starting in the 6th grade. Answering this political question – one that involves representations of power, social violence and identity – led them to seek a cinematic form that does justice to the uniqueness of each student, but also to the substance of their group. What are we doing together, if it is neither documentary nor fiction? A dramatic film, perhaps, where time does its work on the students’ bodies and discourse, and where we discover the possibility for each to speak in their own name by filming for others, and to become co-authors of the film and subjects of their own lives.
About the filmmaker
Éric Baudelaire is an artist and filmmaker based in Paris, France. After training as a political scientist, Baudelaire established himself as a visual artist with a research-based practice. His feature films Also Known As Jihadi (2017), Letters to Max (2014), The Ugly One (2013) and The Anabasis of May and Fusako Shigenobu, Masao Adachi and 27 Years Without Images (2011) have circulated widely in film festivals, including Locarno, Toronto, New York, FID Marseille and Rotterdam.