“Each spectator has their own way of looking”

Why is young Paul, your double in Spectators!does he feel such a fascination for cinema?

Paul was first fascinated by the magical and illusionist side of Georges Méliès’ films. This is what I felt around the age of 10. Then I gradually preferred the Lumière brothers who, by passing segments of reality through the cinema machine, showed us that reality could become romantic. This is the thesis of my film: the 20th century had to invent cinema for us to see how exciting and intense our lives are. “Cinema is the art of expanding or contracting time,” said Hitchcock so well.

Your film is a tribute to the 7th art, but also to television. For what?

Because in the provinces, where I grew up in the 1960s, I discovered many significant films thanks to the black and white television that I watched at my grandparents’ house. I do not establish a hierarchy between popular films and art films.

For me, what matters is “that films provoke conversation”, as the philosopher Stanley Cavell said.

Are you still a big movie watcher?

I have felt profoundly a spectator, since childhood. I need other people’s films to invent my own. The spectators are far from being passive, everyone has their own way of watching. It is this specific activity that I try to describe in my latest film. When each of my feature films is released, I rejoice in the dialogue that is established with my audience. I draw on this instructive exchange to create the following films. It is this possibility of conversing around films which is, in part, at the origin of my vocation.