Antoine-Marie Meert

45,000 patients died in French psychiatric hospitals between 1939 and 1945. A single site escaped this carnage: the asylum in Saint-Alban, an isolated village in Lozère. What happened there for it to be an exception? Retracing several decades in the history of this important site of psychiatry, using precious archival films and the accounts of those who worked there, Martine Deyres answers this question and, in doing so, shows how the political courage and poetic audacity that were practised there contributed to changing medicine and society’s perception on madness. Intersecting in the crucible of this movement called “institutional psychotherapy” were members of the Resistance, artists, doctors and philosophers—including Paul Eluard, Tristan Tzara and Georges Canguilhem.

A woman, hospitalized for a relatively long period, observes what surrounds her. She has time to dream, to revisit certain moments of her life. These memories, like small bubbles begin with her birth in Marseille in 1949 and bring us to Antwerp, Paris, New York, England… to end in Flanders in 2015, after she gets out of the hospital. There Was A Little Ship is a filmic-biographical essay, sincere and poetic.

A day in the life of director Boris Lehman: he wanders from cafe to bookshop, cinema to museum, writer to musician, and into the storeroom of the film archive... He celebrates his birthday in an alleyway, with a friend, and finishes his journey with an escapade to Bruges and a stroll by the North Sea. The camera plays dirty tricks and the sound recorder gets carried away, to the point that both are clearly telling Boris to stop filming. Yet he persists…

The last day of the life of German Jewish writer and philosopher Walter Benjamin (1892-1940). The director re-routes Walter Benjamin between Cerberus and Port-Bou before his suicide. When we started shooting, the director's camera was stolen. The film incorporates this episode and attempts to reconcile two fates.

This distinctly personal journey into the artistic possibilities of independent film is not to be missed. Jonas Mekas, Jean-Pierre Gorin, Robert Kramer and many other visionaries and mavericks of the silver screen – as well as a book seller, a critic and a psychoanalyst – discuss what cinema has meant to them, what it is and what it could be and, implicitly, how it has changed over the 18 years in which this film was shot. Director Boris Lehman leads the charge, drawing in moments of absurdist humour and inventive camera work; he keeps things raw and spontaneous. His encounters with the now much-missed Jean Rouch and Stephen Dwoskin are particularly touching and stand testament to their personal playfulness and candour. An engaging, absorbing, epic odyssey of a movie.

The story of my hair can be told in two lines. My hair was long and black. It has turned white. It hasn't been cut since 1982, almost thirty years ago. Story of my Hair is a journey, both in space and in time. Anyone looking for truths, whether geographical, scientific or historical, will be disappointed. After looking at real events and real places the film very soon distances itself from them, preferring poetry and fiction. In his own fashion the auteur has combined the story of Samson and Delilah, the journey of those condemned to the death camps, the science of hair and a few thoughts about the meaning and fragility of life.

Portrait of Richard Kenigsman by Boris Lehman.

Trying to describe oneself is a movie about representation. How it is possible, through film, to describe oneself and describe others. With the camera as mirror and third eye. At first, a collage-like combination of letter-writing, investigation and journey, something between documentary and feature film. Finally, a portrait of Boris Lehman from 1989 to 1995, part II of BABEL.

The dialogue is based on the Gospel according to St John. The apostles are played by friends (the disciples) of Boris Lehman, most of them movie-makers, filmed in front of the last house still standing opposite the new buildings of the European Union. Judas is played by Claudio Pazienza and Christ by Boris Lehman. The film was shot in a matter of hours on a Sunday morning, with an incredible decor in a street that had been razed to the ground by property developers, just before the police arrived.

The man carrying his body, his reels of film, his bag and his old Nikon, is Boris Lehman, he's also Sisyphus, Jesus Christ, and Ixion as told by Alfred Jarry in La Chandelle Verte. An essay on heaviness and lightness. The carrying man would like to fly, vanish into thin air, into light. When he meets another machine-man, who carries electronic pictures, his dream will come true.

Toda la existencia de la fascinante anciana que da título a este film de Lehman tiene un aire de leyenda. El cineasta define A comme Adrienne de la siguiente manera: “Esta película es un regalo. Un regalo para una mujer. Tiene 77 años, la edad máxima para leer a Tintín. Una noche me invitó a cenar, y hacia el final de la velada, comenzó a recitar historias del folclore persa. Le dije que me gustaría regresar la semana siguiente para filmarla. Se pensó que estaba bromeando, porque muchos le habían dicho lo mismo antes, y ninguno volvió. Pero esta vez sí pasó… La filmé a menudo. Aparece en muchas de mis películas. Quizás el cine ha cambiado la vida de Adrienne, pero lo que es seguro es que ella ha contribuido a cambiar la mía”. De nuevo, la creación es indivisible de la vida real. La película concluye con Adrienne relatando un cuento persa, reflejo de su propia existencia y del cine de Lehman, un artista que siempre ha sabido disfrutar de una buena historia.

Through many photographs, he tells the story and allows his story to be told by those photographed. This is where the brilliant documentary reversal takes place.

In a burlesque mode, the director tries to deflate the world (realized here by a globe), to level it, to put its three dimensions in two. To do this, he fights against the material and the ball, embraces it, lies down on it, twists and tramples it. Illusory victory or vain efforts?

To attain knowledge, man and woman had to be willing to give up their innocence," says Boris Lehman. Life Lesson is a poetic and philosophic reflection on the theme of paradise lost. Some fifty persons illustrate the planet's convulsions and the world's vacillations. Trying to communicate, to commune with the invisible, they cry out, sing out, give out messages, each in their own way, in their own state of solitude. These are like multiple echoes that resemble waves in the water or stars in the sky. " Behind these images and sounds that have been stifled by today's society, Lehman hunts for noises, cries, songs, messages that go astray. He says that if we look at the invisible we may hear the words. He invites us to look beyond the appearances of social life and to vibrate in tune with life's polyphony that is all around us."

A woman attempts to put up wallpaper, and ends up undressing as she keeps getting stuck to things.

A comedy short in which a young woman has her clothes stolen at the beach, and needs to get hold of something to cover herself without being seen.

A comedy short in which a young woman has her clothes stolen at the beach, and needs to get hold of something to cover herself without being seen.

From the construction of a sculpture "life size" in the earth, the director Boris Lehman imagines a story that staged a sculptor (Paulus Brun) struggling with an impossible order. The man of land is "golemise", takes life in the countryside, and ends up dying on an opera stage.

From pond to plate, we are shown the journey and destiny of one carp among many. This particular carp will be eaten stuffed during a family meal. Carp stuffed (in the Polish fashion), also called in yiddish (Gefilte Fish) is a traditional dish eaten by Ashkenazi Jews. It is cooked, sweetened and served as a cold dish at the start of the meal. The head is reserved for the head of the family. The film, set in Brussels, on the day of the Jewish New Year (Rosh Hashanah), aims to show the culinary preparation together with the accompanying prayers and ritual. It focuses particularly on the sacrifice of the fish and on the issue of mass extermination.