French filmmaker Nicolas Philibert is one of the world’s leading documentary directors, but he remains “humble,” he told an audience Saturday at Thessaloniki Documentary Film Festival, which had presented him with its honorary Golden Alexander award the previous evening.
Among other honors, Philibert won the European Film Award and was BAFTA nominated for “To Be and to Have,” and won Berlin’s Golden Bear for “On the Adamant.”
In a discussion Saturday, Philibert said he doesn’t like to be described as an “observational filmmaker.” He is not merely recording reality, but “re-writing” it, he said. Philibert, who edits his own films, added that the most important thing was to construct a narrative. He told Variety later that his films could be considered a form of fiction as they are his version of reality, and if five filmmakers shot in the same place at the same time, they would produce five different films. “It is my own gaze. I decide where to place the camera and what to film. It is reality as being re-written by me. Not an observation,” he said during the talk, which was described as a masterclass although he wasn’t comfortable with the term.
“On the Adamant”
Courtesy of TS Productions
He doesn’t like to over-prepare for his films, and remains open for spontaneous incidents, and underscores the need to improvise. “I plan for something that is accidental,” he said with a smile. “It is nice to be open to disturbance. You meet people who disturb or scare you or give you food for thought, and make you see things in a different way, and it stimulates you.”
He added: “I need a starting point, but I don’t know where it will take me. I am not even sure I will make the film. I need an idea which is promising. What is important is not the topic. There are no good or bad subjects. We can make a good film on a small subject or a bad film on a large subject. The beauty of the film is not proportional to the importance of the subject.”
He added: “I don’t have a specific intention. The beauty of filmmaking is often related to something that is not predictable. The grace moments are unexpected. I don’t want to make a film based on an idea, about something. I have a humble approach because I am trying to understand. I look to collect something that helps me understand why I wanted to make the film.”
“To Be and to Have”
Courtesy of Les Films d’Ici
For Philibert, the relationship with the people featured in the film is key, and so he needs to create “a trust-based climate.” He added: “I need to be sure I will establish a relationship there so the people can give me and the viewers something. I will use the camera to give voice to these people and give me something I want. I can’t know in advance what people will give me. I don’t try to teach people with my films. I try to understand what these people can teach me.”
His documentaries tend to be centered on specific locations – such as a school or a psychiatric clinic – and a community. “To Be and to Have” was set in an elementary school in a village in France. He said the children didn’t take long to accept the camera being in the school room. He allowed them to play around with the filming equipment first and the same day he started shooting.
Speaking about “On the Adamant,” which is set at the Adamant, a day-care center in central Paris for adults with a variety of mental disorders, he explained: “It is a film about human beings; it is not about a psychiatric clinic.” He said the psychiatrists had been very open to the idea of shooting the film, and it helped him shoot “Averroès & Rosa Parks,” which was shot at two psychiatric units at the Esquirol Hospital in Paris, and “The Typewriter and Other Headaches,” which takes us into the homes of some of the protagonists from “On the Adamant” and “Averroès & Rosa Parks” during visits by their caregivers. “On the Adamant” is “very popular among psychiatrists and has been screened to many of them. It has served as a passport. Their doors are wide open because they trust me. They know that I will be very careful, and I won’t do anything stupid. I wouldn’t film someone who is suffering a lot. I don’t film people without them knowing it.”
He has kept in touch with the people who featured in “On the Adamant” and continues to go to the clinic. “I went there a few weeks ago. The adventure continues beyond the film. There is a relationship that continues,” he said.
Early in his career, he shot a film about a mountain climber for a TV series called “Les carnets de l’aventure,” and the experience stayed with him. “Filming someone who risks his life in front of the camera can’t be taken for granted. It was difficult,” he said. “I wanted to be sure that the camera would not push him to exaggerate what he was doing. The camera affects reality. It becomes a filmed reality. It becomes a different thing. I could push him to do more than he is able to do and put him at risk because of the camera. Would he be able to resist that pressure? Making a documentary implies a responsibility towards those we film.”
He added: “We are pushing people who are in the shadows into the light. Some things will never be the same for them. They will never be regarded in the same way. They will react in different ways. We need to know that and bear that in mind. We have a certain responsibility for the people who we film.”
Asked about when he knew he had shot enough, he said: “I could continue for ever but there is a moment when the editing becomes a bigger desire for me. Now I want to see how everything I have collected comes together.”