EPREUVES D'ARTISTES (WORDS IN PROGRESS)

Synopsis

The history of modern cinema is written first at festivals. Following on from Histoire(s) de festival, and Les marches, etc. (une comédie musicale), Gilles Jacob gathers together more elements telling the endless tale of the Festival de Cannes. These are fragments that, when spliced together, create one great press conference; one comprehensive story of film creation over the last 25 years. Thirty of the greatest international film directors reveal some of their secrets; think aloud; resume the state of the word in a single sentence after having fixed it on the lens of their camera.

This film is an invitation to see and to hear, together, great filmmakers who meet each other, admire each other, answer each other and share common ideas, their meeting witnessed by an author who feels great affection for them. Godard (to whom the film is dedicated) reflects on contemporary art, Scorsese quotes Welles and Ozu, Coppola does not see time passing - although Time has not forgotten him -, Kiarostami is found in good company, next to Fellini, as is Tarkovski, next to Bresson, and the outbursts of these artists, barely provoked by their tormentors, the press, seem justified.
As usual, in these Words in Progress, Jacob proceeds using the association of ideas and images, effects of rhyme, assonance and dissonance without a single word of commentary, which would only be superfluous. His film is a pretext to sculpting using light, to directing using a feeling of warmth, and he sometimes resumes them in a detail of their work, they whose profession it is to direct.