Alain Cavalier, filming to ward off death

Picture of the movie Etre Vivant et le Savoir ( Living And Knowing You Are Alive ) © DR

With Être vivant et le savoir (Living And Knowing You Are Alive), the filmmaker adds a highly intimate part documentary, part fictional piece to his collection of unique films, born of an abandoned project he had started work on with his novelist and screenwriter friend of thirty years, Emmanuèle Bernheim, who passed away in 2017.

Keeping death at bay by capturing the state of living might be a good way of summarising the artistic process that lies at the heart of Alain Cavalier's work. His latest films offered up a series of snapshots of life, both his own and that of others.

Even when the director strays from the real world and ventures into the realms of the imagination, his film-making is always firmly rooted in reality, in the tangible existence of his own experiences and emotions. To accurately recreate them on screen, this poetic observer of the everyday and master weaver of film and immortality never prepares for filming, believing instead that films should form naturally, thus avoiding the exhaustion that can come with planning.

For over twenty years now, Alain Cavalier has preferred to plough the depths of what makes this art form everything it is by filming alone – an obsession he nurtures on a daily basis, by capturing impromptu vignettes with his little camera, his very own amulet to ward off death, the tool that enables him to remain fully independent and in control of his work. "I used to think you had to have a lot of experience to film a little. Now I know that filming and experiencing are exactly the same thing," he explains.

In Être Vivant et le Savoir (Living And Knowing You Are), Alain Cavalier offers viewers an intimate, painful snapshot of a moment in time. Gripped with grief, the director reworked and added new sequences to the video diary he kept with Emmanuèle Bernheim.

The pair had been working on a film based on the novelist's autobiography, Tout s’est bien passé, in which the writer recounted how she cared for her father in his last few days. Before she passed away just a few weeks before filming, the screenwriter was due to play herself, with Alain Cavalier standing in for her father.

"By accepting life, inspired by the courage shown by Emmanuèle and her father, I hope to bring the viewer soothing clarity," says the filmmaker.