HISTOIRE RACONTÉE PAR JEAN DOUGNAC

“In the confined space of a bedroom, an old man lying on his bed has been waiting
for me for thirty years. He has a secret and is dying to reveal it. I set my DV camera
at the foot of the bed. The frame turns the room into a theatre stage. It is not an
interview, but a polyphonic monologue in one long static shot. Juggling with two
tongues, French and Occitan, Jean Dougnac tells me the singular story of my
parents, from whom I was separated at birth. He tells me about my mother,
Edmonde, whose mysterious handicap he was never able to identify. He reveals to
me the secret of my birth. Images are conveyed by his voice. There is nothing linear
in his tale: a family tragedy is about to be exposed, involving destitute father and
mother, misery, abandonment, and family court. But it is only the background to
other cinematographic and political stories, other lives in motion, explored through
words. At the end of his tale, there is some suspense, a happy end, an ending open
to fable, with the discovery of a character on the way.”
Noëlle Pujol thus describes her film, better than anyone else could. One could add,
though, that there are some echoes of Eustache here, some kind of ethno-poetry,
a genre that isn’t explored enough. Or that parts of the film had already been shown
(under the title VAD, FID 2005), and that the whole project was completed between
2001 and 2009. The time of memory is long and patience is required, but the
filmmaker has already proved us her talent in this respect. (JPR)