An ordinary woman but a film-maker

Abstract

Demain et encore demain/Tomorrow and Tomorrow—Diary 1995 (1997) is French director Dominique Cabrera's self-portrait. Taking as a starting point Cabrera's own description of herself as ‘an ordinary woman but a film-maker’, the purpose of this article is to show how Cabrera, by exposing herself on screen under her various identities (woman, daughter, sister, mother, lover, citizen and film-maker), brings about her own rebirth because she arrives at an understanding of what it means to be an artist. Her intimate visual diary becomes a means of accommodating herself to the world. This article also deals with the way Cabrera skilfully edited her film so that spectators are able to share what she herself was going through at the time of filming: a sense of loss leading to despair and finally, paradoxically, happiness. The article shows how her images of traces of bodies, fragments of conversations, half-gestures, and leftovers can give a sense of memory and times past, and embody love, anger and guilt. The article highlights the various references to cooking running through the film and concludes that for Cabrera the art of film-making is akin to the culinary art.