Simone Weil

History

Simone Weil (1909–1943) philosophized on thresholds and across borders. Her persistent desire for truth and justice led her to both elite academies and factory floors, political praxis and spiritual solitude. At different times she was an activist, a pacifist, a militant, a mystic, and an exile; but throughout, in her inquiry into reality and orientation to the good, she remained a philosopher.

Profile

Movies

Je suis Simone (La condition ouvrière)

Writer

This is the diary which the French philosopher Simone Weil kept when, as a twenty-five-year-old, she took a one-year sabbatical from school and her studies and worked in a Parisian factory from December 4, 1934 until August 1935, running the presses at the Alsthom electric company. This experience formed the basis for her book La condition ouvrière. The written chronicle of her days is visually accompanied by a continuous flow of dark rooms and the urban landscape of Île Seguin (suburbs south of Paris), paying particular attention to construction sites and factories.

Simone Weil Avenue

Writer

The above narrative, by Simone Weil, the French philosopher and mystic, was written into her last notebook. The places filmed show where she lived and worked during that time. It was 1942-43.