Âmes de fous
A few scenes and photos is all that remains of the film Âmes de fou. What might it have been? This performance reconstruction offers one splendid vision.
24'
France
IFFR 2019
In 1986, Laurent Roth was able to finish his first longer work: Les yeux brûlés, a documentary about war photographers and cinematographers that honoured some of France’s then still-living greats, while also fathoming the complex relationship between film and armed combat since the inception of the cinematic art.
When Roth returned to the material of Les yeux brûlés for a portrait of Schoendoerffer, only the audio still existed – the images were lost. Roth took this in his stride and came up with a stunning solution: he used the complete audio, unedited, and severely slowed down the few existing shots of Schoendoerffer (and his interviewer, actress Mireille Perrier) to fit the sound, length-wise. By framing the interview with a brief preface on ruins and a coda dealing with the end of the Indochina Wars and the fate of captive soldiers, Pierre Schoendoerffer, la peine des hommes becomes an essay on frailty as the condition humaine.
IFFR 2019
Programme IFFR 2019
Total cinema: from historical treasures to the edge of the technically possible – film as a laboratory of constant re-invention, an archive of dreams and futures.
Read more about this programmeA few scenes and photos is all that remains of the film Âmes de fou. What might it have been? This performance reconstruction offers one splendid vision.
24'
France
IFFR 2019
When the termination of the film Maritime Climates created a quota problem for Rīgas Kinostudijā, a shelved documentary instead became the loveliest of teenage romances!
76'
Latvia
IFFR 2019
A cinematographically minimalist prose poem crafted using nothing but the titles of movies that are lost. A reverie supreme.
8'
Japan
IFFR 2019