Raymond Depardon is one of the essential figures of contemporary cinema as well as one of the most important photographers of our time. He is perhaps the only one who has succesfully crossed the border between photography and cinema. Devoided of all sentimentalism and subjectivity, his films don’t try to achieve empathy or illusory communication with the subjects, not even affinity with the spectator.
All fragments of reality captured by his camera inmediatly become a document of a small part of the human being in all its complexity, without any ideological positioning, preconceived ideas or moral assessments. As Alain Bergala says, Depardon observes like a cat, with a silent, attentive but inscrutable, enigmatic look.
This very attitude, absolutely against the current of what has motivated the debate about documentary cinema in the last 30 years, is what makes Raymond Depardon an exceptional filmmaker. With the passage of time his films preserve all the power of reality, all the opacity and the diversity of all possible interpretations.
Play-Doc dedicates a retrospective to this wonderful French photographer and filmmaker, showing some of his most representative works. |