Vies

"I have always wanted my films to resemble the shape of an egg. The Notre-Dame besides an egg, that's nothing, absolutely nothing! The contrasting effect of the two middle portraits works well with the first and the last. The surgeon, that's filmed in four hours ; Françoise, that in thirty minutes non stop ; Jean-Louis, the sculptor, that filmed during five years; and the butcher was filmed very rapidly, and it's the entire five minutes that I've filmed: his whole life condensed in a few sentences, an intellectual would be incapable of doing so. But each portrait was done for the persons themselves in the first place, I say this without any pose. If you film without considering any aspect of distribution, you do a better job. (...) It's over: I cannot face anybody I am filming in the presence of other people. It's an indecent autobiographical clarity and it's impossible to do otherwise, because one passes with one's entire body through the camera. (...) I'm living an economy of chosen poverty, but absolutely without any lack. Luxury terrorises me, the more because I have known this as a filmmaker." (From an interview in Les Inrockuptibles, november 2000)For a retrospective text on the career of Alain Cavalier: see the IFFR 1997 catalogue.