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THE SUPER 8 YEARS
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At the end of the winter of 1972,
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we bought a Bell
& Howell Super 8 camera
4
00:01:02,799 --> 00:01:06,249
with all the projection equipment.
5
00:01:06,623 --> 00:01:11,775
My husband Philippe Ernaux
and I were in our very early thirties
6
00:01:11,800 --> 00:01:14,443
and had two
sons of seven and three,
7
00:01:14,467 --> 00:01:16,480
Eric and David.
8
00:01:17,758 --> 00:01:19,859
For 7 years we'd lived in Annecy,
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00:01:19,883 --> 00:01:23,151
where Philippe Ernaux,
after studying at Sciences Po,
10
00:01:23,175 --> 00:01:25,026
had landed the post
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00:01:25,050 --> 00:01:27,109
of Deputy
Secretary-General at city hall.
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00:01:27,133 --> 00:01:30,008
I taught literature at high school.
13
00:01:30,342 --> 00:01:32,943
Arriving from Bordeaux,
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00:01:32,967 --> 00:01:36,234
we didn't like the
mountains all around us,
15
00:01:36,258 --> 00:01:38,234
the endless winters,
16
00:01:38,258 --> 00:01:41,109
sudden fleeting springs
17
00:01:41,133 --> 00:01:43,481
and touristy summers.
18
00:01:44,175 --> 00:01:46,151
We got used to it
19
00:01:46,175 --> 00:01:48,092
and loved the city.
20
00:01:53,600 --> 00:01:57,451
Amid the flood of goods
one could acquire in the 70s,
21
00:01:57,475 --> 00:02:01,405
for us the camera
was the ultimate desired object,
22
00:02:01,430 --> 00:02:04,448
much more than a
dishwasher or a colour TV.
23
00:02:05,767 --> 00:02:09,909
Film truly captured life and people,
24
00:02:09,933 --> 00:02:12,425
even if the films were silent.
25
00:02:22,475 --> 00:02:26,784
What strikes me
about the very first images shot
26
00:02:26,808 --> 00:02:29,243
is the theatrical ''happening'' feel
27
00:02:29,267 --> 00:02:33,034
which the camera brought to family life,
28
00:02:33,058 --> 00:02:35,701
a ''happening'' conceived by my husband,
29
00:02:35,725 --> 00:02:38,600
who filmed the
moment I arrived with the kids
30
00:02:38,642 --> 00:02:41,852
from school and the supermarket.
31
00:02:44,975 --> 00:02:47,368
It is an extraordinary moment,
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00:02:47,392 --> 00:02:51,080
happy but tinged
with a kind of violence.
33
00:02:53,975 --> 00:02:59,055
We don't know what to do with
this new sort of time torn from our life.
34
00:03:07,933 --> 00:03:12,368
At the end, the
camera pans across the decor,
35
00:03:12,392 --> 00:03:16,909
the objects we'd chosen
one by one from antique stores,
36
00:03:16,933 --> 00:03:19,576
the ornate and trendy wallpaper,
37
00:03:19,600 --> 00:03:23,961
all the things that marked
us as newcomers to the bourgeoisie.
38
00:03:26,808 --> 00:03:30,909
It's basically the homeowners'
tour but we didn't own the house,
39
00:03:30,933 --> 00:03:34,288
since it came with my husband's job.
40
00:03:42,725 --> 00:03:44,545
Head film-maker -
41
00:03:44,767 --> 00:03:47,868
Philippe Ernaux
retained with few exceptions
42
00:03:47,892 --> 00:03:50,951
this role I left to him without protest
43
00:03:50,975 --> 00:03:55,493
because I feared mishandling
the equipment, very costly at the time,
44
00:03:55,517 --> 00:03:59,686
and maybe too because
of a gender-based division of labour
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00:04:00,142 --> 00:04:03,305
established at
the start of our life together.
46
00:04:12,100 --> 00:04:14,743
My mother had lived
with us since my father's death
47
00:04:14,767 --> 00:04:18,618
and the sale of her
café-grocery in Yvetot, Normandy.
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00:04:18,642 --> 00:04:23,145
She was happy we'd asked her
but aware, as she said one day in anger,
49
00:04:23,475 --> 00:04:26,686
of ''clashing with the decor''.
50
00:04:27,058 --> 00:04:30,451
At home she almost
always wore a flowered blouse
51
00:04:30,475 --> 00:04:35,368
with pockets in which to put
a handkerchief and lumps of sugar,
52
00:04:35,392 --> 00:04:38,243
perhaps a reflex
from her early days of poverty,
53
00:04:38,267 --> 00:04:41,286
and memories of war restrictions.
54
00:04:43,975 --> 00:04:47,409
My mother, physically
robust from a life of work,
55
00:04:47,433 --> 00:04:50,368
was anxious to ''keep up her position''
56
00:04:50,392 --> 00:04:53,698
so always wore a
skirt suit outside the house.
57
00:04:54,100 --> 00:04:57,534
My mother, whom I
snap at and berate too often,
58
00:04:57,558 --> 00:05:01,951
while her tireless
loving devotion to the children
59
00:05:01,975 --> 00:05:03,364
gives me freedom.
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00:05:09,558 --> 00:05:13,034
Behind the image of
the nondescript young mother,
61
00:05:13,058 --> 00:05:16,534
I can't help but remember
a woman secretly tormented
62
00:05:16,558 --> 00:05:18,034
by the need to write
63
00:05:18,058 --> 00:05:21,034
and, as I noted in my journal,
64
00:05:21,058 --> 00:05:26,089
''assemble all the
events of my life in a novel, violent
65
00:05:26,892 --> 00:05:28,281
and red.''
66
00:05:44,599 --> 00:05:47,909
In the scenes of Christmas 1972,
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00:05:47,933 --> 00:05:52,533
beneath the feverish,
wonder-struck opening of toys,
68
00:05:52,808 --> 00:05:56,826
the festivity of a meal also celebrating
69
00:05:56,850 --> 00:06:00,300
the eighth birthday
of Eric, born on December 25,
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00:06:00,892 --> 00:06:02,826
beneath all this,
71
00:06:02,850 --> 00:06:05,342
I now perceive a different reality,
72
00:06:05,600 --> 00:06:10,493
one of afternoons when
I don't teach and I secretly write
73
00:06:10,517 --> 00:06:13,243
a novel that describes how education,
74
00:06:13,267 --> 00:06:17,659
culture, separated me from
the working-class world of my birth.
75
00:06:17,683 --> 00:06:18,826
''Secretly'',
76
00:06:18,850 --> 00:06:21,743
because I can't tell my husband,
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00:06:21,767 --> 00:06:23,827
my mother even less.
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00:06:24,433 --> 00:06:28,284
Both are transparently
present in my novel,
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00:06:28,308 --> 00:06:32,813
they who personify the
two milestones of my social journey,
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00:06:32,975 --> 00:06:36,617
its point of origin
and its point of arrival.
81
00:06:51,599 --> 00:06:54,326
To leave home and travel far away
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00:06:54,350 --> 00:06:57,451
was a growing desire in the '70s
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00:06:57,475 --> 00:07:01,692
when the Guide du Routard
was born, a desire that we shared.
84
00:07:02,017 --> 00:07:06,186
We didn't just want
to lie on the beach like idiots.
85
00:07:09,850 --> 00:07:13,201
Le Nouvel Observateur,
the weekly magazine
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00:07:13,225 --> 00:07:16,868
of the cultural avant-garde
of the non-communist left
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00:07:16,892 --> 00:07:19,159
suggested a
Chilean socialist experience,
88
00:07:19,183 --> 00:07:22,743
via an organised
trip over Easter of 1972.
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00:07:22,767 --> 00:07:27,201
Like everyone in left-wing
France, we were watching Chile
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00:07:27,225 --> 00:07:31,250
and Salvador Allende's Popular Unity.
91
00:07:31,308 --> 00:07:33,868
And for us, filming represented
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00:07:33,892 --> 00:07:39,019
not a way of taking action
in the world, but of being its reporter.
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00:07:43,599 --> 00:07:45,826
I was dazzled to be there,
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00:07:45,850 --> 00:07:48,773
up above the Andes mountain range.
95
00:07:56,308 --> 00:08:00,326
In Santiago, between
two pisco sours at the Sheraton,
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00:08:00,350 --> 00:08:03,618
we saw pupils receive
smocks for the new school year
97
00:08:03,642 --> 00:08:07,159
in the presence of the
cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova,
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00:08:07,183 --> 00:08:09,867
the first woman
to have gone into space.
99
00:08:11,142 --> 00:08:13,701
We visited nationalised factories
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00:08:13,725 --> 00:08:18,038
and mingled with the
inhabitants of a self-managed población.
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00:08:20,558 --> 00:08:25,206
We wanted to believe in
Venceremos, ''we shall overcome''.
102
00:08:28,017 --> 00:08:32,368
We set off for the Atacama
Desert and the Antofagasta salt mines
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00:08:32,392 --> 00:08:33,680
near Chuquicamata,
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00:08:33,975 --> 00:08:37,534
the world's largest
open-pit copper mine.
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00:08:37,558 --> 00:08:40,493
We patiently
listened to production figures
106
00:08:40,517 --> 00:08:43,536
and the land reform mechanism.
107
00:08:48,433 --> 00:08:51,118
The moment of
the trip which made us feel
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00:08:51,142 --> 00:08:54,368
we'd seen history in the making
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00:08:54,392 --> 00:08:59,118
was during an authorised visit
to the presidential palace, La Moneda,
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00:08:59,142 --> 00:09:02,493
when we saw
Allende come out of his office.
111
00:09:02,517 --> 00:09:05,326
With two ministers,
for an hour he enlarged
112
00:09:05,350 --> 00:09:07,618
upon his revolutionary measures,
113
00:09:07,642 --> 00:09:12,575
the return of land to the peasants,
the nationalisation of copper and coal,
114
00:09:12,599 --> 00:09:16,625
the distribution of
milk to malnourished children.
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00:09:32,142 --> 00:09:35,201
We didn't feel we were filming misery
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00:09:35,225 --> 00:09:37,409
because it had become the struggle
117
00:09:37,433 --> 00:09:39,924
of a president and his government.
118
00:09:56,683 --> 00:09:59,558
In Valparaiso, in the mist,
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00:09:59,599 --> 00:10:03,433
I couldn't believe I
was there, at the end of the earth.
120
00:10:03,850 --> 00:10:05,670
I felt
121
00:10:05,767 --> 00:10:10,118
the Chilean trip was
changing something in my life,
122
00:10:10,142 --> 00:10:14,909
forcing me to recall the
promise I made myself at twenty,
123
00:10:14,933 --> 00:10:17,473
''I will write to avenge my people.''
124
00:10:29,392 --> 00:10:34,368
A year and a half later, hope
had died, La Moneda was bombed,
125
00:10:34,392 --> 00:10:35,826
Allende assassinated,
126
00:10:35,850 --> 00:10:41,408
Pinochet and a military junta
seized power, backed by Washington.
127
00:10:41,683 --> 00:10:46,667
Le Figaro and other
right-wing papers gloated.
128
00:10:49,183 --> 00:10:51,575
The images we'd brought back
129
00:10:51,599 --> 00:10:54,380
were of a country
that no longer existed.
130
00:11:42,725 --> 00:11:44,118
To keep a record
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00:11:44,142 --> 00:11:48,118
of happy moments and
beautiful things is the natural desire
132
00:11:48,142 --> 00:11:52,837
that runs through the
images of spring and summer '72.
133
00:11:59,558 --> 00:12:02,913
To film what you will never see twice,
134
00:12:06,725 --> 00:12:08,786
a boat ride on Lake Annecy,
135
00:12:09,475 --> 00:12:11,326
a walk in the Gorges du Fier,
136
00:12:11,350 --> 00:12:14,034
on top of Semnoz with my in-laws,
137
00:12:14,058 --> 00:12:17,243
whose words and
the meaning of whose gestures
138
00:12:17,267 --> 00:12:21,244
vanished in the air of the summer's day.
139
00:12:58,725 --> 00:13:00,618
In those years,
140
00:13:00,642 --> 00:13:04,236
we were drawn to
the Ardèche, a short trip away,
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00:13:04,892 --> 00:13:07,368
symbol of a lost life in nature,
142
00:13:07,392 --> 00:13:09,618
as in Jean Ferrat's song La Montagne,
143
00:13:09,642 --> 00:13:12,661
with no pollution
or hormone-fed chickens.
144
00:13:13,558 --> 00:13:17,493
A life we felt nostalgia
for, without having lived it,
145
00:13:17,517 --> 00:13:20,409
and which we never planned to adopt,
146
00:13:20,433 --> 00:13:22,589
except for the holidays.
147
00:13:23,975 --> 00:13:26,326
My sister-in-law Dominique Ernaux,
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00:13:26,350 --> 00:13:29,909
in revolt against
society since her teens,
149
00:13:29,933 --> 00:13:32,473
had settled near Viviers,
150
00:13:32,933 --> 00:13:36,623
in Ardèche, long before '68.
151
00:13:39,017 --> 00:13:42,201
She shared her life
with a young woman, painted,
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00:13:42,225 --> 00:13:44,326
raised hunting dogs, goats,
153
00:13:44,350 --> 00:13:45,261
chickens,
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00:13:45,308 --> 00:13:48,855
and helped local
people in a system of fair trade.
155
00:13:49,267 --> 00:13:54,076
Next, they moved to an isolated
house with no electricity or running water
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00:13:54,100 --> 00:13:59,274
and an endless view of the
valley between Viviers and Saint-Montan.
157
00:14:05,517 --> 00:14:07,243
It pleased us that the kids,
158
00:14:07,267 --> 00:14:11,243
raised with the rules of
hygiene and advice of parenting experts,
159
00:14:11,267 --> 00:14:13,784
had a chance to live with animals,
160
00:14:13,808 --> 00:14:15,326
drink raw goat's milk,
161
00:14:15,350 --> 00:14:17,159
get dirty without fear,
162
00:14:17,183 --> 00:14:20,451
look out for scorpions hidden in shoes,
163
00:14:20,475 --> 00:14:24,575
make use of what was
not yet called a ''composting toilet''
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00:14:24,599 --> 00:14:27,618
and discover
the sticky twist of flypaper
165
00:14:27,642 --> 00:14:30,995
hanging from the
ceiling, as when we were children.
166
00:14:34,142 --> 00:14:39,575
We felt we'd returned to
an ancestral pre-industrial France,
167
00:14:39,599 --> 00:14:41,659
a slowness we'd forgotten,
168
00:14:41,683 --> 00:14:44,942
far from the agitation of urban life.
169
00:14:52,142 --> 00:14:56,784
Tirelessly we filmed the
shady streets of Alba-la-Romaine,
170
00:14:56,808 --> 00:14:59,618
Labeaume, Mirabel, Balazuc,
171
00:14:59,642 --> 00:15:04,909
the basalt villages which
today I no longer recognise in images,
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00:15:04,933 --> 00:15:06,755
places without humans,
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00:15:07,100 --> 00:15:09,868
as if to capture a timeless purity,
174
00:15:09,892 --> 00:15:14,970
while it's the people we
are touched by in films of later years.
175
00:15:30,183 --> 00:15:33,159
We believed these landscapes immutable,
176
00:15:33,183 --> 00:15:36,534
never imagining
they'd be threatened one day
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00:15:36,558 --> 00:15:39,826
by pollution, a
concept just emerging then,
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00:15:39,850 --> 00:15:42,869
not to speak of global warming.
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00:15:43,267 --> 00:15:46,534
Only the imminent
commissioning of a nuclear plant
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00:15:46,558 --> 00:15:50,439
along the Rhône
aroused fear and anger.
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00:15:50,975 --> 00:15:55,201
We didn't really believe
the ecologists' predictions.
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00:15:55,225 --> 00:15:56,909
René Dumont will obtain
183
00:15:56,933 --> 00:16:00,701
less than 2% of the vote
in the presidential election of 1974
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00:16:00,725 --> 00:16:03,361
and we'll vote for François Mitterrand.
185
00:16:16,600 --> 00:16:19,858
We wanted to
expand the children's horizons,
186
00:16:20,767 --> 00:16:24,326
have them take
a plane and travel abroad,
187
00:16:24,350 --> 00:16:29,525
things that hadn't been
possible for us until our thirties.
188
00:16:31,267 --> 00:16:34,764
The adventure this
time was to travel with them.
189
00:16:44,850 --> 00:16:48,409
It started at Orly
with the Caravelle that took us
190
00:16:48,433 --> 00:16:53,800
to Tangier, and from there
to the resort on the heights of M'Diq,
191
00:16:54,142 --> 00:16:58,201
a luxurious white replica
of a traditional Moroccan village,
192
00:16:58,225 --> 00:17:02,298
with its terraced
apartments and sea view.
193
00:17:03,392 --> 00:17:07,326
We had a western
lifestyle, away from the local people,
194
00:17:07,350 --> 00:17:11,039
represented only by the silent staff,
195
00:17:11,308 --> 00:17:16,292
gardeners and cleaning women
who rubbed salt on the copper trays.
196
00:17:36,308 --> 00:17:38,943
Everything inside was imitation,
197
00:17:41,225 --> 00:17:44,451
from the souk where
we bought embroidered shirts,
198
00:17:44,475 --> 00:17:46,118
djellabas and gandouras
199
00:17:46,142 --> 00:17:48,076
that we hastened to put on,
200
00:17:48,100 --> 00:17:49,618
to the meshwi night,
201
00:17:49,642 --> 00:17:51,743
with Boulaouane and cries of
202
00:17:51,767 --> 00:17:54,881
''He's one of us!
He drank like everyone else'',
203
00:17:55,058 --> 00:17:58,659
not to speak of the
welcome committee of musicians
204
00:17:58,683 --> 00:18:00,888
and a snake charmer.
205
00:18:08,725 --> 00:18:10,951
We didn't swim with the Moroccans
206
00:18:10,975 --> 00:18:12,700
in the neighbouring sea
207
00:18:12,975 --> 00:18:16,284
but stayed with
other tourists by the Club pool.
208
00:18:16,308 --> 00:18:19,368
The public beach was
only used to exercise the horses
209
00:18:19,392 --> 00:18:21,883
after their day at the riding school.
210
00:18:25,767 --> 00:18:28,784
Three weeks of profound dis-occupation,
211
00:18:28,808 --> 00:18:31,575
broken up by visits to royal palaces,
212
00:18:31,599 --> 00:18:35,769
a market and the
old blue city of Chefchaouen,
213
00:18:36,142 --> 00:18:37,743
with a 15-year-old guide
214
00:18:37,767 --> 00:18:39,951
whose services we bargained down,
215
00:18:39,975 --> 00:18:45,820
for a tourist's duty, we understood,
was never to pay the asking price.
216
00:18:53,558 --> 00:18:57,439
Politically there had to
be better choices than Morocco,
217
00:18:57,600 --> 00:19:03,255
whose King Hassan II
violently suppressed all opposition
218
00:19:03,475 --> 00:19:05,951
and was suspected
of having masterminded
219
00:19:05,975 --> 00:19:10,239
Ben Barka's abduction
and Oufkir's assassination.
220
00:19:13,100 --> 00:19:14,586
Three weeks,
221
00:19:15,017 --> 00:19:18,618
enough for us
parents to get a dream tan,
222
00:19:18,642 --> 00:19:20,743
for Eric to learn to swim
223
00:19:20,767 --> 00:19:26,469
and David to enrich his repertoire
of children's songs at the Club's daycare.
224
00:19:38,683 --> 00:19:43,076
Poolside, I thought
of the finished manuscript
225
00:19:43,100 --> 00:19:45,575
in my desk drawer,
226
00:19:45,599 --> 00:19:49,289
which I'd have to
type before school started.
227
00:19:49,475 --> 00:19:54,314
I hoped that it would save
me, but I didn't know how, or from what.
228
00:20:03,308 --> 00:20:06,951
I attribute the same thoughts,
at the end of the same summer,
229
00:20:06,975 --> 00:20:10,909
to the young woman with
her husband at the Wagner Festival,
230
00:20:10,933 --> 00:20:13,999
smiling amidst the officials of Annecy,
231
00:20:14,683 --> 00:20:16,744
twin city of Bayreuth,
232
00:20:21,183 --> 00:20:23,618
strolling around a beer festival,
233
00:20:23,642 --> 00:20:25,702
visiting a brewery.
234
00:20:28,892 --> 00:20:32,294
Doing so, she ponders
the vague image of a Germany
235
00:20:32,350 --> 00:20:35,784
the West one,
obviously, for the other you say GDR -
236
00:20:35,808 --> 00:20:37,868
a fairly quiet Germany,
237
00:20:37,892 --> 00:20:40,826
last year's attacks are forgotten,
238
00:20:40,850 --> 00:20:45,450
Andreas Baader and
Ulrike Meinhof behind bars.
239
00:20:49,267 --> 00:20:53,575
She is 33 and doesn't yet
know that the manuscript sent by mail
240
00:20:53,599 --> 00:20:56,868
will be accepted by Gallimard
241
00:20:56,892 --> 00:21:00,243
and published as Cleaned Out
242
00:21:00,267 --> 00:21:03,237
in the spring of 1974.
243
00:21:13,600 --> 00:21:18,534
That year, Pompidou
dies, Giscard d'Estaing is elected
244
00:21:18,558 --> 00:21:20,659
and Simone Veil defends abortion,
245
00:21:20,683 --> 00:21:23,576
braving the boos
of right-wing delegates.
246
00:21:23,600 --> 00:21:26,159
My husband resigned from his post,
247
00:21:26,183 --> 00:21:28,409
we left the big house and garden
248
00:21:28,433 --> 00:21:33,608
for a small apartment
on a noisy ring road in Annecy.
249
00:21:33,975 --> 00:21:35,534
I went to Paris once
250
00:21:35,558 --> 00:21:39,871
to talk about my book on
the TV show Aujourd'hui Madame.
251
00:21:47,892 --> 00:21:51,284
Filming is poorly
suited to times of upheaval.
252
00:21:51,308 --> 00:21:53,201
We had to wait over a year,
253
00:21:53,225 --> 00:21:55,451
until Christmas 1974,
254
00:21:55,475 --> 00:21:59,576
to again feel moved
to seize that fragile moment,
255
00:21:59,600 --> 00:22:03,076
only big enough to
hold the pure joy of children
256
00:22:03,100 --> 00:22:05,544
and our joy at seeing theirs,
257
00:22:05,599 --> 00:22:07,284
more precious
258
00:22:07,308 --> 00:22:09,701
than this fur-lined lambskin coat,
259
00:22:09,725 --> 00:22:15,044
an upmarket version of hippie
chic, which I wore for many winters.
260
00:22:23,517 --> 00:22:28,451
Watching Eric blow out
his candles with dreamy excitement,
261
00:22:28,475 --> 00:22:31,284
we are probably
thinking, my mother and I,
262
00:22:31,308 --> 00:22:34,243
we the women on the front lines of time:
263
00:22:34,267 --> 00:22:36,280
he's already ten years old.
264
00:22:51,850 --> 00:22:53,243
Once again
265
00:22:53,267 --> 00:22:57,701
it was to the Ardèche we
went, in the holidays of February 1975,
266
00:22:57,725 --> 00:23:00,743
for a time-out in nature and silence,
267
00:23:00,767 --> 00:23:04,695
away from our hectic crowded life.
268
00:23:12,225 --> 00:23:18,263
The release of my first
novel seems distant, almost unreal.
269
00:23:19,142 --> 00:23:24,268
A book doesn't change
your life, as you hope or believe it will.
270
00:23:35,776 --> 00:23:39,419
The summer of Nino Ferrer's Sud,
271
00:23:39,443 --> 00:23:42,086
Joe Dassin's L'été indien,
272
00:23:42,110 --> 00:23:43,586
Annie Cordy's La bonne du curé,
273
00:23:43,610 --> 00:23:46,794
which the kids
listened to on a slot-in turntable,
274
00:23:46,818 --> 00:23:50,124
we joined the Ernaux family in Charente.
275
00:23:50,610 --> 00:23:53,502
My parents-in-law
had finally settled there
276
00:23:53,526 --> 00:23:57,502
after many tribulations,
which took these ruined bourgeois
277
00:23:57,526 --> 00:24:00,086
to Africa, where my father-in-law
278
00:24:00,110 --> 00:24:02,218
had changed
profession at over 55,
279
00:24:02,693 --> 00:24:06,128
and taught physics
at the girls' lycée in Bamako,
280
00:24:06,152 --> 00:24:10,919
and then to Haute-Savoie,
where they'd stayed just one year.
281
00:24:10,943 --> 00:24:14,794
In Charente, they inhabited
a small farmhouse in a hamlet
282
00:24:14,818 --> 00:24:16,752
near La Rochefoucauld,
283
00:24:16,776 --> 00:24:19,211
lived from breeding rabbits
284
00:24:19,235 --> 00:24:21,170
and grew their own produce
285
00:24:21,194 --> 00:24:24,794
in a garden of which
my father-in-law was rightly proud,
286
00:24:24,818 --> 00:24:28,748
as was my mother-in-law of her petunias.
287
00:24:41,610 --> 00:24:46,502
My brother-in-law Maurice, his
wife and their three kids lived close by,
288
00:24:46,526 --> 00:24:48,108
near Angoulême.
289
00:24:51,276 --> 00:24:54,878
That summer Sunday, 3/4
of the way through the 20th century,
290
00:24:54,902 --> 00:24:57,377
in the shade of an amusement park
291
00:24:57,401 --> 00:24:59,463
on a miniature golf course,
292
00:25:00,068 --> 00:25:02,836
time stands still before a rolling ball
293
00:25:02,860 --> 00:25:05,637
that you needed to position just-so.
294
00:25:06,401 --> 00:25:10,523
In these silent images,
bodies speak for themselves.
295
00:25:22,235 --> 00:25:24,044
The young woman with long hair,
296
00:25:24,068 --> 00:25:28,188
sandals, a seventies
dress and abrupt gestures,
297
00:25:28,735 --> 00:25:30,294
may, at this moment, forget
298
00:25:30,318 --> 00:25:34,461
to feel out of
place in a family of in-laws
299
00:25:34,485 --> 00:25:38,270
where all the wives are homemakers.
300
00:25:46,776 --> 00:25:48,502
We left the boys
301
00:25:48,526 --> 00:25:53,079
with their grandparents
and set off for an unusual destination.
302
00:26:24,027 --> 00:26:25,961
Who knew anything about Albania,
303
00:26:25,985 --> 00:26:30,919
its 500 years of Ottoman
Empire engulfed by communism?
304
00:26:30,943 --> 00:26:35,128
Who had heard
of its leader, Enver Hoxha?
305
00:26:35,152 --> 00:26:36,752
Of all the Eastern European countries
306
00:26:36,776 --> 00:26:41,137
to which we were driven by a
tropism of mingled awe and repulsion,
307
00:26:41,985 --> 00:26:48,069
this one offered the highest
coefficient of strangeness and mystery.
308
00:26:54,152 --> 00:26:56,170
At the airport, we had to shed
309
00:26:56,194 --> 00:26:59,878
every sign of
decadent bourgeois civilisation,
310
00:26:59,902 --> 00:27:05,377
the men to exchange tight-fitting
flares for Chinese worker's trousers
311
00:27:05,401 --> 00:27:07,544
and get bowl haircuts,
312
00:27:07,568 --> 00:27:12,504
the women to repack
their trousers and put on dresses.
313
00:27:12,943 --> 00:27:15,586
We soon understood
nothing could be filmed
314
00:27:15,610 --> 00:27:18,294
without permission from the interpreter,
315
00:27:18,318 --> 00:27:20,461
a young woman who, in her words,
316
00:27:20,485 --> 00:27:24,627
''thought she'd
die'' on a trip to Paris in 1970
317
00:27:24,651 --> 00:27:28,101
on seeing
long-haired men and hippies.
318
00:27:30,068 --> 00:27:32,502
We couldn't circulate freely,
319
00:27:32,526 --> 00:27:36,073
let alone mingle with the Albanians.
320
00:27:39,275 --> 00:27:41,669
On the magnificent beach of Durrës,
321
00:27:41,693 --> 00:27:44,836
our little group of eight was ordered
322
00:27:44,860 --> 00:27:49,294
to stay within a well-defined
zone in front of the Hotel Adriatik,
323
00:27:49,318 --> 00:27:51,570
reserved for foreigners.
324
00:27:55,526 --> 00:28:00,894
The Sigurimi, equivalent to
the KGB and the Stasi, was watching.
325
00:28:08,568 --> 00:28:11,752
We were considered
vectors of Western corruption
326
00:28:11,776 --> 00:28:14,173
and would stay in our bubble.
327
00:28:14,485 --> 00:28:19,324
The real country was on
another stage to which we had no access.
328
00:28:32,359 --> 00:28:36,878
Some images show me
standing silent and apart from the group.
329
00:28:36,902 --> 00:28:41,252
I didn't go on all the
excursions but stayed at the hotel,
330
00:28:41,276 --> 00:28:44,752
half-heartedly writing,
reading the only Albanian book
331
00:28:44,776 --> 00:28:47,251
I could find in French,
332
00:28:47,275 --> 00:28:50,104
The White Southern Wind, by Jakov Xoxa.
333
00:28:53,693 --> 00:28:57,627
What was most moving
and paradoxical about the trip
334
00:28:57,651 --> 00:29:01,502
were the things that took
us furthest from the ''New Man''
335
00:29:01,526 --> 00:29:04,258
and back to the days of our childhoods,
336
00:29:04,735 --> 00:29:08,586
the silence of cities
without cars, people on foot or bicycle
337
00:29:08,610 --> 00:29:10,574
Chinese bicycles, of course -
338
00:29:10,693 --> 00:29:14,431
fields manually worked by men and women,
339
00:29:14,735 --> 00:29:19,382
landscapes not yet disfigured by cement.
340
00:29:25,693 --> 00:29:28,088
We could question nothing,
341
00:29:28,276 --> 00:29:32,044
constantly subjected to speeches
342
00:29:32,068 --> 00:29:34,799
castigating Tito's revisionism,
343
00:29:35,275 --> 00:29:38,199
the Moscow regime
and Western decadence,
344
00:29:39,610 --> 00:29:43,878
praising the benefits of
Mao-inspired cultural revolution,
345
00:29:43,902 --> 00:29:47,781
called ''revolutionarisation''.
346
00:30:01,276 --> 00:30:02,919
Between the remnants
347
00:30:02,943 --> 00:30:06,729
of ancient civilisations
and crude propaganda,
348
00:30:07,068 --> 00:30:10,461
there was a contrast,
a troubling disconnect,
349
00:30:10,485 --> 00:30:12,794
an incompatibility of values
350
00:30:12,818 --> 00:30:14,419
which was, perhaps,
351
00:30:14,443 --> 00:30:18,421
the basis of
Albania's identity at that time.
352
00:30:19,943 --> 00:30:23,627
We could not have
imagined that 20 years later,
353
00:30:23,651 --> 00:30:27,461
of all the monuments to the
glory of the Stalinist-Maoist regime,
354
00:30:27,485 --> 00:30:29,354
nothing would remain.
355
00:30:29,568 --> 00:30:31,752
All that was left to see
356
00:30:31,776 --> 00:30:34,711
were ancient ruins
from over 2000 years before,
357
00:30:34,735 --> 00:30:36,413
which do not age.
358
00:30:52,318 --> 00:30:55,335
We saw nothing of the Albania of 1975
359
00:30:55,359 --> 00:30:59,003
but perhaps no more or
less than summer visitors today,
360
00:30:59,027 --> 00:31:02,188
thousands who flock
to the beaches on the Adriatic.
361
00:31:02,275 --> 00:31:06,044
The country is now a
top holiday spot in the Balkans,
362
00:31:06,068 --> 00:31:10,878
while since 1989 its
inhabitants have fled in droves,
363
00:31:10,902 --> 00:31:13,919
migrants shunted from
one end of Europe to another,
364
00:31:13,943 --> 00:31:18,586
drawn by the image of a
happiness that we, at some past time,
365
00:31:18,610 --> 00:31:22,502
despite our distance from the people,
366
00:31:22,526 --> 00:31:26,648
or maybe because
of it, made them want.
367
00:31:56,275 --> 00:32:02,003
Winter sports were a growing
craze amongst the middle and upper classes.
368
00:32:02,027 --> 00:32:05,752
Resorts were being
built from scratch, as in Flaine.
369
00:32:05,776 --> 00:32:07,961
The new concept
370
00:32:07,985 --> 00:32:10,836
of buying timeshare
weeks caught on quickly,
371
00:32:10,860 --> 00:32:15,627
a phenomenon only slightly
parodied in the film French Fried Vacation.
372
00:32:15,651 --> 00:32:19,170
With a loan made
advantageous by two-digit inflation,
373
00:32:19,194 --> 00:32:22,020
we bought a studio
374
00:32:22,235 --> 00:32:27,313
in a new building in the
upper part of the old village of La Clusaz.
375
00:32:33,985 --> 00:32:36,961
By capturing and
making a record of beginnings,
376
00:32:36,985 --> 00:32:40,669
the camera recovered
its original justification.
377
00:32:40,693 --> 00:32:44,627
We filmed David's first
times skiing downhill at La Clusaz,
378
00:32:44,651 --> 00:32:47,718
as we had Eric's at Le Grand-Bornand.
379
00:33:14,902 --> 00:33:17,461
And as usual, to
take possession of the place,
380
00:33:17,485 --> 00:33:20,251
we filmed elements of the decor,
381
00:33:20,275 --> 00:33:21,335
an act of magic
382
00:33:21,359 --> 00:33:24,878
or the premonition of a
day when they'd be moved or gone
383
00:33:24,902 --> 00:33:28,304
and we could no longer say where or why.
384
00:33:30,275 --> 00:33:33,294
In this living
space reduced to one room,
385
00:33:33,318 --> 00:33:37,823
family ties were
reasserted more than strengthened.
386
00:33:38,152 --> 00:33:41,586
It's a time of fatherly
pranks and mises-en-scene,
387
00:33:41,610 --> 00:33:43,794
Mille Bornes and Monopoly,
388
00:33:43,818 --> 00:33:47,170
and the nickname ''fish
mama'' which my husband gave me,
389
00:33:47,194 --> 00:33:50,260
based on the song by Boby Lapointe.
390
00:33:53,110 --> 00:33:56,657
It was no place
to stir up old conflicts.
391
00:34:08,818 --> 00:34:13,211
The woman in the image
always seems to wonder why she's there.
392
00:34:13,235 --> 00:34:20,135
I write in my journal that winter sports
and Savoyard fondue are no joking matter.
393
00:34:20,276 --> 00:34:24,752
I felt a spectator to
what would be for years to come
394
00:34:24,776 --> 00:34:26,549
a winter ritual
395
00:34:26,776 --> 00:34:29,412
and for me a duty to enjoy myself.
396
00:34:34,735 --> 00:34:36,961
I was the only one who didn't ski.
397
00:34:36,985 --> 00:34:39,141
I read, marked essays,
398
00:34:39,526 --> 00:34:42,881
wrote a little,
looking out on the Aravis,
399
00:34:42,985 --> 00:34:45,086
where the sun rose in the morning
400
00:34:45,110 --> 00:34:49,135
and in the evening lit
the mountain face with rays of pink.
401
00:34:49,276 --> 00:34:53,541
I understood why the sun
had once been worshipped like a god.
402
00:35:34,194 --> 00:35:37,170
Towns were built
in the country near Paris,
403
00:35:37,194 --> 00:35:39,541
called ''new towns''.
404
00:35:39,776 --> 00:35:44,281
We landed in one
of these, Cergy-Pontoise.
405
00:36:07,985 --> 00:36:11,170
When I wonder about
Philippe Ernaux's odd desire
406
00:36:11,194 --> 00:36:15,252
to film objects transplanted
from one house to another,
407
00:36:15,276 --> 00:36:18,294
it seems to me a
sign of hidden insecurity,
408
00:36:18,318 --> 00:36:21,752
that of a child sent to
Jesuit boarding school at eight,
409
00:36:21,776 --> 00:36:24,939
a child whose parents constantly moved.
410
00:36:25,027 --> 00:36:27,128
These paintings and furniture
411
00:36:27,152 --> 00:36:30,985
reveal today their
futility as lifeless objects.
412
00:36:38,902 --> 00:36:43,502
We unconsciously sought to
give the present a future and create,
413
00:36:43,526 --> 00:36:46,335
image by image, scene by scene,
414
00:36:46,359 --> 00:36:48,919
something like a family fiction
415
00:36:48,943 --> 00:36:52,106
to which each would later add a subtext.
416
00:37:05,693 --> 00:37:09,878
There is nothing in the
smiles around this festive table
417
00:37:09,902 --> 00:37:12,252
to suggest that the family order
418
00:37:12,276 --> 00:37:17,170
will be overturned two
days later when my mother decides
419
00:37:17,194 --> 00:37:21,419
to return to
Yvetot, leaving me at a loss.
420
00:37:21,443 --> 00:37:26,086
My mother, whose keen,
attentive gaze makes me ill-at-ease.
421
00:37:26,110 --> 00:37:29,669
There may be no
greater humiliation for a daughter
422
00:37:29,693 --> 00:37:35,128
than to be unable to hide the
signs of marital discord from her mother,
423
00:37:35,152 --> 00:37:39,608
a silent, disapproving witness.
424
00:37:40,651 --> 00:37:42,664
I wrote in my diary,
425
00:37:42,860 --> 00:37:46,836
''You mustn't think about
these things, old age and death,
426
00:37:46,860 --> 00:37:49,063
or you'll lose all hope.''
427
00:38:10,235 --> 00:38:15,128
In the summer of 1976,
more remembered for the great drought
428
00:38:15,152 --> 00:38:19,251
than for the death
sentence of Christian Ranucci,
429
00:38:19,275 --> 00:38:21,919
refused pardon by Giscard d'Estaing,
430
00:38:21,943 --> 00:38:26,752
the four of us, en route
for London, boarded the hovercraft
431
00:38:26,776 --> 00:38:30,179
that crossed the Channel in 25 minutes.
432
00:38:30,275 --> 00:38:33,419
We were drawn
by hopes for cooler weather
433
00:38:33,443 --> 00:38:36,941
but it was as hot
as in France, the grass burnt -
434
00:38:37,735 --> 00:38:39,752
and the educational desire
435
00:38:39,776 --> 00:38:43,502
to immerse the kids in
English, which Eric had studied for a year
436
00:38:43,526 --> 00:38:47,024
with a purely audiovisual method
437
00:38:47,068 --> 00:38:48,410
that baffled us.
438
00:38:51,610 --> 00:38:54,377
Also a desire to
introduce them to breakfast
439
00:38:54,401 --> 00:38:57,335
with bacon and eggs, double-decker buses
440
00:38:57,359 --> 00:39:00,294
and everything that
made England at the time,
441
00:39:00,318 --> 00:39:02,043
as it is today,
442
00:39:02,275 --> 00:39:04,817
the most exotic of nearby countries.
443
00:39:08,526 --> 00:39:12,312
We preferred the
freedom of the parks to museums,
444
00:39:12,359 --> 00:39:15,252
the coolness of
boating on the Serpentine,
445
00:39:15,276 --> 00:39:18,296
the surprise of
an old-time merry-go-round,
446
00:39:19,194 --> 00:39:23,251
the slow boat trip
along the banks of the Thames
447
00:39:23,275 --> 00:39:24,425
past the docks
448
00:39:25,110 --> 00:39:28,251
not yet transformed into Silicon Valley,
449
00:39:28,275 --> 00:39:30,529
as they'd be under Thatcher.
450
00:39:52,902 --> 00:39:54,836
We'd chosen a hotel
451
00:39:54,860 --> 00:39:58,251
with a central location, Soho,
452
00:39:58,275 --> 00:40:02,252
which had become a
bustling district with a fevered nightlife,
453
00:40:02,276 --> 00:40:03,794
a mixture of pubs,
454
00:40:03,818 --> 00:40:06,598
sex shops and porn cinemas,
455
00:40:06,693 --> 00:40:08,335
and only went back there
456
00:40:08,359 --> 00:40:11,809
to sleep in rooms
luckily facing the courtyard.
457
00:40:18,359 --> 00:40:20,544
Those days left me with memories
458
00:40:20,568 --> 00:40:23,348
of a long and peaceful flânerie.
459
00:40:23,943 --> 00:40:26,669
I'd just finished my second book
460
00:40:26,693 --> 00:40:30,957
and not yet started to
worry about the publisher's verdict.
461
00:40:36,401 --> 00:40:40,211
There was a certain
sweetness to revisiting London,
462
00:40:40,235 --> 00:40:41,432
where at 19
463
00:40:42,027 --> 00:40:44,294
I'd worked as an au pair,
464
00:40:44,318 --> 00:40:46,187
been very unhappy,
465
00:40:47,068 --> 00:40:51,141
become bulimic and shoplifted.
466
00:40:51,818 --> 00:40:54,377
The idea of returning to Finchley,
467
00:40:54,401 --> 00:40:59,577
the chic suburb where I'd spent
six months in 1960, didn't occur to me,
468
00:40:59,943 --> 00:41:01,752
or I rejected it
469
00:41:01,776 --> 00:41:05,945
as inappropriate to
the family situation now mine.
470
00:41:06,276 --> 00:41:10,461
Nor did I insist on
a stroll through Whitechapel,
471
00:41:10,485 --> 00:41:12,785
which I'd wanted to see at 19
472
00:41:13,275 --> 00:41:15,624
because of Dickens and Oliver Twist
473
00:41:15,985 --> 00:41:18,128
and Piaf's song that goes
474
00:41:18,152 --> 00:41:23,566
''C'est à Hambourg, à
Santiago à Whitechapel, ou Borneo''.
475
00:41:52,975 --> 00:41:54,993
In the summer of 1977,
476
00:41:55,017 --> 00:41:59,410
we moved to a
house on the heights of Cergy,
477
00:41:59,434 --> 00:42:02,285
bordering fields where very quickly,
478
00:42:02,309 --> 00:42:05,950
new housing estates would spring up.
479
00:42:08,309 --> 00:42:09,827
A curious house,
480
00:42:09,851 --> 00:42:13,828
massive and
convoluted, dating from the fifties.
481
00:42:16,851 --> 00:42:17,809
From the windows
482
00:42:17,851 --> 00:42:22,410
we could see the
voluptuous curves of the river Oise
483
00:42:22,434 --> 00:42:24,243
and on the far horizon,
484
00:42:24,267 --> 00:42:28,160
the Eiffel Tower
and the hulk of La Défense.
485
00:42:28,184 --> 00:42:30,785
We will not think of filming a landscape
486
00:42:30,809 --> 00:42:33,869
no less ephemeral than childhood,
487
00:42:33,893 --> 00:42:38,034
one of cranes,
trenches, disparate constructions
488
00:42:38,058 --> 00:42:41,743
offered to the eye by
the new town of Cergy-Pontoise,
489
00:42:41,767 --> 00:42:44,160
a muddy no man's land
490
00:42:44,184 --> 00:42:45,950
which ten years later
491
00:42:45,974 --> 00:42:47,535
will have been erased,
492
00:42:47,559 --> 00:42:52,111
undetectable in Rohmer's
film Boyfriends and Girlfriends.
493
00:42:56,559 --> 00:43:00,535
It was an abstract, imaginary city,
494
00:43:00,559 --> 00:43:02,428
still in the making.
495
00:43:08,392 --> 00:43:12,368
We never tired of filming this
landscape over the months and seasons,
496
00:43:12,392 --> 00:43:16,511
this overgrown garden
where wild rabbits prospered.
497
00:43:22,642 --> 00:43:26,381
There will,
however, be very few interiors,
498
00:43:27,392 --> 00:43:31,075
no more birthday meals at all,
499
00:43:31,100 --> 00:43:33,162
no more family moments filmed.
500
00:43:33,974 --> 00:43:38,951
Today I see in that
absence a sign unnoticed then,
501
00:43:38,975 --> 00:43:42,520
as we watched the latest reel together,
502
00:43:42,601 --> 00:43:45,954
a sign of bonds unravelling.
503
00:43:50,559 --> 00:43:52,577
Our reluctance to film ourselves
504
00:43:52,601 --> 00:43:56,326
expressed the general
lassitude of a couple near forty
505
00:43:56,350 --> 00:43:59,897
whose way of life
weighed equally on both.
506
00:44:10,559 --> 00:44:12,702
In the fall of 1978,
507
00:44:12,726 --> 00:44:16,654
I accompanied Philippe
Ernaux to a conference in Ajaccio.
508
00:44:19,517 --> 00:44:24,069
I was often alone while
Philippe Ernaux was in meetings.
509
00:44:24,934 --> 00:44:26,951
I walked around, looked in windows
510
00:44:26,975 --> 00:44:28,910
along rue du Cardinal Fesch,
511
00:44:28,934 --> 00:44:32,240
I felt like a
Frenchwoman from the mainland.
512
00:44:33,225 --> 00:44:36,285
It was our first time in Corsica
513
00:44:36,309 --> 00:44:38,451
and inadmissibly
514
00:44:38,475 --> 00:44:41,951
we expected to feel
uprooted, as much as, or even more
515
00:44:41,975 --> 00:44:44,370
than if we were in a foreign country.
516
00:44:52,974 --> 00:44:56,993
Sometimes I stayed at
the hotel, far from the city centre
517
00:44:57,017 --> 00:45:00,228
and close to the
beach, deserted in October.
518
00:45:01,642 --> 00:45:04,951
I read Paul
Nizan, I wrote in my journal,
519
00:45:04,975 --> 00:45:09,951
''The water falls on the terrace,
forming fleeting moons on the puddles.
520
00:45:09,975 --> 00:45:15,820
From here I see palm trees,
an ochre statue, the bougainvillea.''
521
00:45:17,729 --> 00:45:24,081
I recall the mornings when I walked
up a sandy little path to the bus stop,
522
00:45:24,434 --> 00:45:27,979
past the closed beach bars,
523
00:45:28,225 --> 00:45:30,243
a moment of pure pleasure
524
00:45:30,267 --> 00:45:36,353
which counterbalanced the
boredom and loneliness of the formal meals.
525
00:45:36,975 --> 00:45:38,285
On the beach,
526
00:45:38,309 --> 00:45:41,660
I was buoyed by the
certainty of finishing the book
527
00:45:41,684 --> 00:45:43,827
I'd only just begun to write
528
00:45:43,851 --> 00:45:46,034
my story of a woman
529
00:45:46,058 --> 00:45:49,368
assigned since
marriage to the role of nurturer,
530
00:45:49,392 --> 00:45:52,937
silent manager and steward,
531
00:45:53,559 --> 00:45:59,357
whereas I'd been raised to
believe in freedom and equality with men.
532
00:46:26,225 --> 00:46:28,669
That book, A Frozen Woman,
533
00:46:28,851 --> 00:46:31,910
had just been
finished and sent to my editor
534
00:46:31,934 --> 00:46:34,904
when we left for Spain the summer of '80
535
00:46:35,809 --> 00:46:40,618
with the boys in their
early teens, in Iron Maiden t-shirts,
536
00:46:40,642 --> 00:46:42,993
asking for their heavy metal
537
00:46:43,017 --> 00:46:45,797
and Queen tapes
to be played in the car.
538
00:46:46,934 --> 00:46:51,822
Giscard's haughty presidency
was ending in a slow, heavy climate,
539
00:46:51,934 --> 00:46:54,451
scarcely brightened by farcical tales
540
00:46:54,475 --> 00:46:59,315
of diamonds from
Bokassa and sniffer planes.
541
00:46:59,975 --> 00:47:02,618
We doubted François
Mitterrand had a chance,
542
00:47:02,642 --> 00:47:04,606
allied with Georges Marchais.
543
00:47:05,142 --> 00:47:06,798
We'd have preferred Rocard.
544
00:47:07,559 --> 00:47:12,254
One could go to Spain without
bad conscience since Franco's death
545
00:47:12,601 --> 00:47:15,993
but paradoxically,
not without a shiver of fear
546
00:47:16,017 --> 00:47:18,827
due to the attacks of the ETA,
547
00:47:18,851 --> 00:47:22,204
who were said
to puncture tourists' tires,
548
00:47:23,142 --> 00:47:27,359
a fear forgotten as of
Pamplona and the San Fermin festival.
549
00:47:27,392 --> 00:47:31,160
We were immersed in dizzying jubilation,
550
00:47:31,184 --> 00:47:33,579
bullfights, non-stop music,
551
00:47:33,684 --> 00:47:37,243
the Bigheads
swaying between narrow walls,
552
00:47:37,267 --> 00:47:42,155
everything I'd just read in
The Sun Also Rises by Hemingway.
553
00:48:10,309 --> 00:48:11,743
In Pamplona,
554
00:48:11,767 --> 00:48:17,255
I'd no idea that in my memory, this
trip would signify a rite of initiation
555
00:48:17,280 --> 00:48:19,450
into another life,
556
00:48:19,475 --> 00:48:24,649
its stages marked by the cities
travelled through in the Peugeot 504.
557
00:48:24,674 --> 00:48:29,034
Valladolid, where David
came down with food poisoning,
558
00:48:29,851 --> 00:48:30,993
Toledo,
559
00:48:31,017 --> 00:48:34,324
the Tagus and the sinister Alcázar.
560
00:48:34,349 --> 00:48:38,622
Soria, Alba de Tormes, Almazán.
561
00:48:40,601 --> 00:48:41,942
Salamanca,
562
00:48:42,309 --> 00:48:45,827
especially Salamanca,
and the Plaza Mayor,
563
00:48:45,851 --> 00:48:50,950
where after a heated argument, I
remained one evening alone with my sons
564
00:48:50,974 --> 00:48:53,368
until the sun went down,
565
00:48:53,392 --> 00:48:55,500
a perfect moment.
566
00:49:11,184 --> 00:49:14,285
In the permanent
familial and conjugal one-on-one
567
00:49:14,309 --> 00:49:15,951
of a family trip,
568
00:49:15,975 --> 00:49:20,285
things that stay hidden
on ordinary days suddenly explode,
569
00:49:20,309 --> 00:49:27,017
conflicts are aggravated, usually
dissolved in people's daily occupations.
570
00:49:27,684 --> 00:49:30,285
With a lucidity made more painful
571
00:49:30,309 --> 00:49:34,076
by the memory of another
summer, the one when we met
572
00:49:34,100 --> 00:49:36,209
seventeen years earlier,
573
00:49:37,225 --> 00:49:39,368
I wrote in my journal,
574
00:49:39,392 --> 00:49:41,787
''I'm superfluous in his life.''
575
00:51:43,017 --> 00:51:46,910
A year later, in the
summer of '81, in Portugal,
576
00:51:46,934 --> 00:51:49,329
our personal history had taken
577
00:51:49,974 --> 00:51:53,493
a turn for the worse
with the publication of my book
578
00:51:53,517 --> 00:51:54,910
A Frozen Woman,
579
00:51:54,934 --> 00:51:59,951
while political history
billowed with great expectations
580
00:51:59,975 --> 00:52:03,425
since François
Mitterrand's May 10th victory.
581
00:52:06,017 --> 00:52:09,850
The camera that summer
no longer sought happy moments.
582
00:52:10,684 --> 00:52:14,451
The scarcity of faces
and bodies in the images,
583
00:52:14,475 --> 00:52:17,869
which struck me
when we watched the reels,
584
00:52:17,893 --> 00:52:20,336
signified growing distance in a couple.
585
00:52:23,434 --> 00:52:26,785
Of the towns we
travelled through, I remember
586
00:52:26,809 --> 00:52:30,834
only the unfinished
chapels of Batalha, with sky for roofs,
587
00:52:31,017 --> 00:52:34,611
a monster traffic
jam on our way out of Setúbal,
588
00:52:34,642 --> 00:52:38,667
the alleys of Obidos,
where I bought an embroidered dress,
589
00:52:38,934 --> 00:52:42,815
trams in the steep
and narrow streets of old Lisbon,
590
00:52:43,267 --> 00:52:47,326
which today for me
have merged with Alain Tanner's
591
00:52:47,350 --> 00:52:48,836
In the White City,
592
00:52:49,017 --> 00:52:51,950
streets destroyed by the great fire
593
00:52:51,974 --> 00:52:53,413
of 1988.
594
00:53:19,559 --> 00:53:22,577
On that trip, Philippe
Ernaux was miles away
595
00:53:22,601 --> 00:53:24,996
and I was dramatically absent.
596
00:53:26,017 --> 00:53:27,167
In a sense,
597
00:53:27,350 --> 00:53:32,190
the wind of freedom
from the spring had caught us up.
598
00:53:48,601 --> 00:53:50,618
In the fall of '81,
599
00:53:50,642 --> 00:53:52,451
silencing our grievances,
600
00:53:52,475 --> 00:53:55,827
we seized the chance to go to Moscow,
601
00:53:55,851 --> 00:53:59,410
courtesy of Philippe
Ernaux's work council,
602
00:53:59,434 --> 00:54:01,350
a four-day trip.
603
00:54:01,934 --> 00:54:03,410
It was too short
604
00:54:03,434 --> 00:54:06,076
and we didn't expect much from a visit
605
00:54:06,100 --> 00:54:09,493
organised by the
Soviet agency Intourist.
606
00:54:09,517 --> 00:54:14,076
However, when we
landed at Sheremetyevo airport,
607
00:54:14,100 --> 00:54:19,660
greeted by Red Army
soldiers with oddly childlike faces,
608
00:54:19,684 --> 00:54:22,224
I was gripped by a sudden emotion,
609
00:54:22,601 --> 00:54:26,702
as if the weight of 20th
century History had converged
610
00:54:26,726 --> 00:54:29,660
and unfurled in the space of a second
611
00:54:29,684 --> 00:54:33,229
all images of Russia
accumulated since childhood.
612
00:54:42,684 --> 00:54:47,702
The USSR was the
Beyond, immense, unrepresentable,
613
00:54:47,726 --> 00:54:51,660
containing both Siberia
and the beaches of the Black Sea,
614
00:54:51,684 --> 00:54:52,869
Tolstoy,
615
00:54:52,893 --> 00:54:55,336
Dostoevsky, Tchaikovsky, Eisenstein,
616
00:54:56,184 --> 00:54:58,326
Lenin, Stalin,
617
00:54:58,350 --> 00:55:00,160
the muzhik Khrushchev
618
00:55:00,184 --> 00:55:01,951
to Leonid Brezhnev,
619
00:55:01,975 --> 00:55:04,410
in office from time immemorial,
620
00:55:04,434 --> 00:55:06,159
grim and massive,
621
00:55:06,601 --> 00:55:10,721
''not quite sinister but
almost'', to paraphrase Coluche.
622
00:55:15,726 --> 00:55:20,660
On the marked route that took
us by Intourist coach from Red Square,
623
00:55:20,684 --> 00:55:23,160
with St. Basil's Cathedral
624
00:55:23,184 --> 00:55:25,368
and the endless queue
625
00:55:25,392 --> 00:55:27,243
at Lenin's mausoleum,
626
00:55:27,267 --> 00:55:29,910
to Lomonosov University,
627
00:55:29,934 --> 00:55:33,959
a symbol of
glorious Stalinist architecture,
628
00:55:34,100 --> 00:55:36,368
we vaguely searched for signs
629
00:55:36,392 --> 00:55:39,747
of the joy or misery of being a Soviet.
630
00:55:42,225 --> 00:55:45,869
What did it mean to live in
an order magnified by the grandeur
631
00:55:45,893 --> 00:55:48,243
of the Worker and the Kolkhoz Woman,
632
00:55:48,267 --> 00:55:54,689
with hieratic profiles of
workers on the walls, extolling production?
633
00:56:07,100 --> 00:56:11,285
The trip to Moscow
is the last we made together,
634
00:56:11,309 --> 00:56:13,285
and the last film shot.
635
00:56:13,309 --> 00:56:16,785
The family unit
collapsed the following year.
636
00:56:16,809 --> 00:56:20,307
It was agreed the
boys would stay with me.
637
00:56:20,434 --> 00:56:24,827
Their father took the
camera, which he'd use in his new life,
638
00:56:24,851 --> 00:56:29,451
and left me the projector,
the screen and all the reels of film.
639
00:56:29,475 --> 00:56:32,410
He resolutely entered another existence
640
00:56:32,434 --> 00:56:35,743
and abandoned the
memory of the old one with us.
641
00:56:35,767 --> 00:56:39,456
In short, he made me its guardian.
642
00:56:42,642 --> 00:56:48,034
It was a new form of family life
that developed with my teenaged sons
643
00:56:48,058 --> 00:56:50,647
and we let the films sleep a long time.
644
00:56:52,517 --> 00:56:55,118
To set up the screen in the dining room,
645
00:56:55,142 --> 00:56:59,410
raise the projector with
books on the table, gather chairs,
646
00:56:59,434 --> 00:57:03,172
wait for everyone to be seated
647
00:57:03,392 --> 00:57:05,410
and then watch the images roll
648
00:57:05,434 --> 00:57:08,022
as each added his or her remark,
649
00:57:08,475 --> 00:57:12,076
all the ceremony once eagerly awaited
650
00:57:12,100 --> 00:57:14,497
was part of a bygone era.
651
00:57:22,601 --> 00:57:25,330
My sons had to become fathers themselves
652
00:57:25,434 --> 00:57:30,076
for us to rediscover
together these traces of their childhood
653
00:57:30,100 --> 00:57:33,934
and the dead, alive again.
654
00:57:35,058 --> 00:57:36,353
My mother,
655
00:57:40,267 --> 00:57:42,327
the Ernaux grandparents,
656
00:57:46,350 --> 00:57:48,267
Dominique the rebel
657
00:57:50,017 --> 00:57:53,285
and the one who'd
filmed it all, Philippe Ernaux,
658
00:57:53,309 --> 00:57:56,136
who died of a smoker's cancer.
659
00:58:02,809 --> 00:58:05,923
It was both joyful and melancholy.
660
00:58:06,726 --> 00:58:09,840
Each of us thought in disbelief
661
00:58:09,934 --> 00:58:12,761
''that was me, that was us'',
662
00:58:13,434 --> 00:58:16,910
knowing nothing,
then, of a mysterious future
663
00:58:16,934 --> 00:58:20,719
in which the year
2000 was a horizon too remote
664
00:58:20,893 --> 00:58:22,521
for us to care about.
665
00:58:28,241 --> 00:58:32,075
But what story was
told in this parade of images
666
00:58:32,100 --> 00:58:35,647
with no sound but
the crackle of the projector?
667
00:58:36,767 --> 00:58:39,869
Words were needed to
give meaning to this silent time,
668
00:58:39,893 --> 00:58:41,411
snippets of family life
669
00:58:41,726 --> 00:58:44,984
invisibly recorded
inside the history of the era.
670
00:58:57,225 --> 00:59:00,618
It would be a fragment
of family autobiography,
671
00:59:00,642 --> 00:59:02,174
and a chance for me
672
00:59:03,267 --> 00:59:06,326
to recall decisive years of my life,
673
00:59:06,350 --> 00:59:11,535
and for all of us to revisit
that light shone upon the past,
674
00:59:11,559 --> 00:59:14,076
the golden light of ''Indian summer''
675
00:59:14,100 --> 00:59:18,173
which Joe Dassin
sang about in those years.
676
01:00:16,309 --> 01:00:18,945
Subtitles: Alison Strayer
677
01:00:19,142 --> 01:00:21,011
Subtitling: HIVENTY
52140
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