Fashioning the intimate: a cartography of autobiographical French documentary film

Abstract

ABSTRACT In the 1980s, the French documentary field opened up to a number of autobiographical practices which redrew the frontiers of the cinematic landscape. L’Heure exquise (‘The exquisite hour’) (René Allio, 1980), Lettres d’amour en Somalie (‘Love letters in Somalia’) (Frédéric Mitterrand, 1982) and Mourir à trente ans (‘Dying at thirty’) (Romain Goupil, 1982) are the notable signs of this change. This shift was confirmed in the years that followed, as borne out by La Pudeur ou l’Impudeur/Modesty and Shame (Hervé Guibert, 1992), Rome désolée/Desolate Rome (Vincent Dieutre, 1995) and Je suis venue te dire (‘I came to tell you’) (Laetitia Masson, 1997), to name but a few. These films are investigations and confessions that tell stories of love or sickness, happiness or sorrow. Faced with grief and reparation, the act of creation is motivated by a quest and a recovery of the self. In the 2000s, initiatives diversified, based (sometimes politically) on the societal context of the period within which the filmmakers worked (family, genre, etc.). In this article, the author assembles a three-stage filmic cartography and defines issues at stake in this intimate autobiographical dimension forged over 40-odd years by French documentary films.