Journal de France, Raymond Depardon, France, 2012, 100’
This is a memory movie on the road. The internationally acclaimed photographer and filmmaker Raymond Depardon spent six years travelling round France in a van, extracting the essence of his country of origin with a big format camera. The film offers us that travel diary alongside his partner and collaborator Claudine Nougaret; it also takes us, time-wise, through his effervescent and creative career path: from his very first steps behind a camera, to his presence as a reporter in moments and events that changed the history of the world: the revolutions in Venezuela and Prague, the presidential campaign of Valery Giscard d’Estaing, Chad, Venice, Cannes, the West Bank, Afghanistan, Italy, the Central African Republic…In short, a film with a vital double component: on the one hand, the singular portrait of a country, its landscapes and people. And at the same time, a fascinating, intimate, dynamic portrait by one of the great visual artists of our time, one of those artists for whom the image – photographic and cinematographic – is a way of thinking and a way of life.
This is a memory movie on the road. The internationally acclaimed photographer and filmmaker Raymond Depardon spent six years travelling round France in a van, extracting the essence of his country of origin with a big format camera.