Gérard Courant

Loosely inspired by Edgar Poe. A mixture of darkness, melancholy and evanescence, a disturbing atmosphere surrounds Lady Usher's Diary. This slow and feverish melodrama...

Le Nouvel Hiver is a slightly disillusioned reflection on the state of the world (the fall of the Berlin Wall, the end of the USSR, the Gulf War), the events of which are the thread of this year's Notebooks (1 January 1991 to 31 December 1991). Of course, these Notebooks are far from this sinister current events because life is elsewhere, in creation and in a quest for the absolute. And then, Le Nouvel Hiver takes us into surprising encounters (with Ken Loach, Brigitte Lahaie) and transports us to places I can't live without (the Ardèche in the North).

I give a methodical account of my film work: the creation of new series (Lire, Trio, Avec Mariola), the shooting of a new feature film (Amours décolorées which will take ten years to edit) with Mariola San Martin.

Le Passeur immobile, which covers the year 1987, is a Booklet filmed stuck between The Days and the Nights (1986) and The Artifice and the Fake (1988). These Notebooks have been punctuating my activity as a filmmaker for about fifteen years. They are like a life parallel to my other films and film series (Cinema, Group Portrait, Read, etc.). They are also like a letter to the spectators.

"A Debate Across the Universe" is, on the one hand, the capture of the debate which followed the world premiere screening of my film "Across the Universe", presented as part of the "Ethnology and Cinema" in Grenoble, at the Les Méliès cinema in Saint-Marcellin and, on the other hand, the criticism of this debate and additional information relating to the staging of "Across the Universe".

No plot available for this movie.

"Autour de Vent-Pire" is a documentary recounting the shooting of "Vent-Pire", the vampire film that Gérard Courant shot on November 12, 1970 at the Porte du Diable in the Pasques forest in Plombières-lès-Dijon.

This episode of the Filmed Diaries shows behind-the-scenes footage from the filming of 24 Passions . It was filmed in 2003 to mark the 24th anniversary of filming this documentary about the Burzet pilgrimage. The first part shows the deserted Stations of the Cross filmed a few days before the procession. The second part, with Richard Copans behind the camera, shows me filming the procession on Good Friday. The final part is my own footage, only a fragment of which was chosen for inclusion in my film 24 Passions . (Gérard Courant)

This film is an audio interview of Louis Skorecki, filmmaker and film critic for Cahiers du cinéma, by Patrice Kirchhofer and Gérard Courant. This interview, later put into images by Gérard Courant, is centred around the feature film Eugénie de Franval, based on Sade's novella, which Louis Skorecki shot in 1974 and which was awarded the prize of "la porte entrouverte" at the festival of young cinema in Toulon in 1975 by the jury composed of Marguerite Duras, Shuji Terayama and Dominique Noguez.

This episode of the Carnets filmés, shot in Mexico, is largely devoted to Barbara Peón Solis's photographic exhibition, entitled Como Buda te Veras, which was held in Querétaro. Beyond this artistic event, Exposición (Journal du Mexique) is a stroll through Mexico City and an unusual exploration of the Teotihuacan pyramid site.