The new theme for 2023/24 is ‘filmer l’autre: le geste documentaire’ for which, as usual, there’s no easy translation into English. It seems to be the question of filming – and constructing? – ‘otherness’ – ‘alterité’, in French terms. Jack Lang, sometime French Minister for the Arts, and for Education, determined that the purpose of the arts in education was to enable children and young people to encounter ‘the other’. This notion has been influential with Alain Bergala, the artistic patron of Cinema Cent Ans de Jeunesse.
As usual, the theme is sub-divided into categories, enabling us to structure a programme. There are types of ‘otherness’: animals, children (though are they really ‘other’ to other children?), ‘labour’ (how work makes us ‘other’ to ourselves..), and maybe controversially, types of mental or cognitive or behavioural difference.
There are also styles – or ‘regimes’ – of documentary, of which the three main ones seem to be ‘neutral observation’; interaction between filmmaker and subject(s); and more direct intervention, such as voice-over and maybe reconstruction.
There’s a Vimeo album of clips to watch: https://vimeo.com/showcase/filmer-l-autre-le-geste-documentaire; the password is FLA.
And here is the PPT we followed on Wednesday evening to introduce the theme, Exercises, clips.
Cinema cent ans de jeunesse - BFI edit 