Cinema: Journal de France

Journal de France is a film produced by two sets of hands ; Ray Depardon, the great photographer and documentary director and Claudine Nougaret, sound enginereer and producer. The film can be split into two parts. First, Raymond Depardon ploughs through asphalt. On board his mobile-home, he photographs the fragments of countryside. For her part, Claudine Nougaret digs, and finds bits of film 'in the cellar.' Only one image could resume their collective ritournelle; a melancholy image of a country in the process of fading out.

In the first part, the viewer follows Depardon and discovers the photographer and director's methods of working; watch, wait but above all get out of the setting, free himself of all that is not needed. A formidable lesson of simplicity that we see put into practice in one of the first of the director's firms, shot in the streets of Paris. Depardon photographs and films trivial places, but without wanting to give meaning to the insignificant or mock the picturesque destitution of small people. This Journal de France is an educational film without being didactic. Depardon simply shows his professional development, snapshot by snapshot, it is life, a route abounding with encounters, of landscapes and faces that he unveils to us.

Special mention to the band-an eclectic sound in which Patti Smith combines with Alexandre Desplat.