The maker of the classic documentary Etre at Avoir on why he avoids researching the subjects of his films beforehand – and then relies on his audience to tell him what they mean
In France we have a saying: "Le chemin se fait en marchant"; the path is made by walking it. And that, for better or worse, is how I tend to work as a film-maker. I make my documentaries from a position of ignorance and curiosity. I need to have a starting point but I don't need a map; I don't need to know the final destination. In this way, the film is an invitation. It's saying: come with me and we'll go and see what's happening. We might get lost but that's OK.
In 1991 I made a film about the deaf community, In the Land of the Deaf. I wanted the movie to show the world through their eyes and to have sign language as its mother tongue. What I didn't want was to meet with specialists or read any books on the subject. If you do that, you're simply carrying a ton of baggage into the encounter. You spend the whole time checking your homework and reinforcing your prejudices. The less I know, the better I feel. And, besides, I have never liked films that are based on certainty. I'm not a journalist and I'm not a teacher. The films are not there to put a new idea on the table or to tell the viewer what to think. A film is not a message; it is just a film.
Which is not to say that I don't have my own specific prejudices or interests. Of course I do, just as everyone does. I've always been fascinated by communication: by voices and language. One of the reasons I was attracted by cinema as a teenager was that it was a way of seeing unknown countries and hearing unknown languages. The cinema was my way of travelling. It allowed me to visit Swedish people in Bergman movies, Italians in Pasolini movies. But of course we aren't getting the entire picture, because the language is translated. So we are having to project our own experience and fill in the gaps with bits of ourselves.
So yes, language and communication are major themes in a number of my films, whether it be In the Land of the Deaf, Etre et Avoir or Nenette. Right now I'm working on a film about Radio France. Naturally the strength of radio is linked to its absence of images and that's what attracted me to the subject. It's a paradox: a film about radio. Who knows? Maybe it's not such a good idea after all.
People sometimes ask me what I'm trying to achieve with my documentaries. I suppose that I'm trying to achieve myself, or at least find myself. Put simply, I make a film in order to understand why I wanted to make a film. The problem is that when the film is finished, I usually still don't know. So then I have to go and make another one.
Basically I don't know what I'm doing. I like to think I'm in control, but I'm not. We make films from our subconscious and there's no way of anticipating what they will provoke in the minds of others.
That's why I like audience Q&As: they help me learn things about my own work. Take Etre et Avoir, for example, my documentary about a rural school in France. I always said that the real subject and theme of that film is about how we grow up and about how we learn to behave in society. Then one day a lady stood up in the audience and said: "You must realise that your film is about separation; about learning to separate." And when I thought about it, it was absolutely clear. It's the whole point of the film. It's the thing that is at the beginning and at the end and that sits right at the very heart of the story. To grow up is to experience separation. I knew it without knowing it. Sometimes nobody is more surprised by a film than the person who made it.
Nicolas Philibert was in London as head of the jury at the Open City Docs Festival and was speaking to Xan Brooks.
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2012/jun/28/nicolas-philibert-what-my-films-are-about
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