Sunday 31st of January 2010, from 11am to 5pm, Media Centre Lume
Hosted by Nicolas Philibert
French Nicolas Philibert will honour DocPoint by hosting the Masterclass of 2010. The director of the award-winning To Be and to Have (2002) lectures about the making of documentaries in an event targeted for scholars and professionals of cinema. Philibert's retrospective Meet the Master: Nicolas Philibert is part of the official festival programme. Moreover, the Masterclass includes clips from his most recent fim Nénette (2009).
Nicolas Philibert (born in 1951) is an absolute virtuoso of cinema vérité. Representative to his work is an uncompromising formal conviction, with no room for artificial light, scripts or actor-like subjects. As a premise for his films he sees freedom and the relationship to those his films, not knowledge. “The less I know about a subject, the better I feel”, has Philibert claimed.
Philibert started his career in the film industry as an assistant director for René Allio, Allain Tanner and Claude Goretta. In 1978 he co-directed his first feature documentary His Master’s Voice together with Gérard Mordillat, in which a dozen bosses of leading industrial groups talk about control, hierarchy and power. Between the years 1985−88 Philibert shot several mountaineering and sports adventure films, such as Christophe (1985), No Problem (1986) and Trilogy for One Man (1987), of which the latter depicts the journey of 26-year-old Christophe Profit to the three most challenging peaks of the Alps. Go for It, Lapébie! (1988), instead, is a portrait of a 77-year-old bicyclist, who in 1988 was the eldest Tour de France -winner alive.
Out of Philibert’s later feature documentaries, each one has obtained a theatrical release. Louvre City (1990) tells the behind-the-scenes story of the workers of the world-famous art museum, In the Land of the Deaf (1992) about the lives of deaf-born people and Animals (1995) about stuffed animals in a natural historical museum. Every Little Thing (1996) takes the spectator to a psychiatric clinic, and in the film essay pitched between documentary and fiction, Who Knows? (1998), actors from Strasbourg plan a play based on the city of Strasbourg. In year 2002 Philibert directed his famous To Be and to Have (2002) about the daily life in a "single class" school in a mountain village in France. Screened as part of the Official Selection at the 2002 Cannes Festival, Prix Louis Delluc 2002, the film was a huge success in France and forty other countries. Back to Normandy (2007, DocPoint 2008) takes the viewer back to the settings of René Allio’s I, Pierre Rivère, Having Slaughtered My Mother, My Sister and My Brother… and to the lives of elder Normans discussing the problematic of growing old. Philibert’s most recent film, Nénette (2009), tells the story of a 40-year-old orang-utan, locked behind bars.
Meet the Master: Nicolas Philibert programme at DocPoint
Nénette (2009)
To Be and to Have (2002)
Every Little Thing (1996)
In the Land of the Deaf (1992)
LouvreCity (1990)
Further information:
Sissi Korhonen
Event Coordinator
DocPoint – Helsinki Documentary Film Festival
Tel. +358 (0)40 506 1065 (from 10am to 6pm)
NICOLAS PHILIBERT – BIOGRAPHY
Nicolas Philibert was born in Nancy, France, in 1951 and grew up in the Alpine village of Grenoble. His father, Michel Philibert, was a professor of philosophy and a cinema-enthusiast, who, alongside with his own lectures, held weekly classes on cinema and the productions of such masters as Antonioni and Bresson. Philibert created an interest for film already as a young boy, but it was not until his teenage years that he started dreaming about a career in the film industry. Having first studied philosophy, Philibert gradually made his way into the industry, working initially as an assistant director for René Allio, Allain Tanner and Claude Goretta. As his skills in mathematics and physics were inexistent, Philibert had no business in to film schools.
In 1978 Philibert co-directed his first feature documentary His Master’s Voice together with Gérard Mordillat, in which a dozen bosses of leading industrial groups talk about control, hierarchy and power. Between the years 1985−88 Philibert shot several mountaineering and sports adventure films, such as Christophe (1985), No Problem (1986) ja Trilogy for One Man (1987), of which the latter depicts the journey of 26-year-old Christophe Profit to the three most challenging peaks of the Alps. Go for It, Lapébie! (1988), instead, is a portrait of a 77-year-old bicyclist, who in 1988 was the eldest Tour de France –winner alive.
Out of Philibert’s later feature documentaries, each one has obtained a theatrical release. As to these, LouvreCity (1990) tells the behind-the-scenes story of the workers of the world-famous art museum, In the Land of the Deaf (1992) about the lives of deaf-born people and Animals (1995) about stuffed animals in a natural historical museum. Every Little Thing (1996) takes the spectator to a psychiatric clinic, and in the film essay pitched between documentary and fiction, Who Knows? (1998), actors from Strasbourg plan a play based on the city of Strasbourg. In year 2002 Philibert directed his famous To Be and to Have (2002) about the daily life in a single class school in a mountain village in the heart of the Massif Central (France). Screened as part of the Official Selection at the 2002 Cannes Festival, Prix Louis Delluc 2002, the film was a huge success in France and around forty other countries. Back to Normandy (2007, DocPoint 2008) takes the viewer back to the settings of René Allio’s I, Pierre Rivère, Having Slaughtered My Mother, My Sister and My Brother… and to the lives of elder Normans discussing the problematic of growing old. The soundtrack of the film was partly composed by an amateur composer named André Veil ― the maternal grandfather of the director himself. Philibert’s most recent film Nénette (2009) tells the story of a 40-year-old orang-utan, locked behind bars.
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