In her documentary “Learning”, Claire Simon tells us about the real at the height of a child

His favorite themes

• The journey to adulthood

Of Recreation (1993) to Learn, by the way The competition (2015) and First solitudes (2017), Claire Simon filmed young people a lot, from childhood to the end of adolescence, giving access to their learning and their questions.

Very attached to keyboards, the village of 700 inhabitants where she spent her childhood in the Var, Claire Simon shot several films there. In 2000, she signed 800 km of difference/romance, A love story between her teenage daughter and the baker’s son. With Garage, engines and men (2021), it films the garage of its town as a place of male transmission.

Finally, in The village (series, 2019) and The son of the groceryman, the mayor, the village and the world (2020), The filmmaker recounts the creation of a digital platform dedicated to author documentaries in Lussas, Ardèche.

Of Patients (1990) evoking the last tour of a doctor in a provincial city, via God’s offices (2008), family planning documentary, up to Our body (2022), a documentary shot in the gynecological service of a hospital, Claire Simon films humans in the reality of their lives, and sometimes their sufferings.

Which makes his filmmaker’s paw

• Immerse yourself for a long time in a place

Until making his presence forget to the protagonists of the film to come.

• Knowing how to improvise in front of the unexpected

Convinced that the ordinary contains fiction, Claire Simon sees documentaries “like farmers in front of the weather, never safe, always on the lookout (1)”.

• Put yourself up to anonymous …

… To the point of making them the heroes of his films: the stressed boss of At all costs (1994), kindergarten students from Recreation (1992) or the anonymous Bois de Vincennes in The woods whose dreams are made (2014). “The banal is cinema. The hero of a film is the ordinary man, ”she says (2) .

→ Mount a film as a weaving to invisible threads

At Claire Simon, the stories seem to be deployed in a spontaneous way, like sewn white thread. It is the fruit of meticulous mounting work. The real thus speaks of itself, without intervention identifiable by the director, that is to say without much offender. The sound work has always been essential in Claire Simon’s films. The filmmaker collaborated with the musicians Alain Bashung, Arthur H, the American Marc Ribot and the Cuban Chucho Valdés.

In Learn the sound engineer Pierre Bompy is at the helm of the sound universe: “He understood very well how I was running, namely without cutting from one plan to another. He followed, being very close to the scenes too. So, I heard what I filmed very clearly, it was magnificent. It is under these conditions that we grasp what children think, what they feel, “said Claire Simon during the presentation of her film at the last Cannes Film Festival.

(1) Extract from a Master Class given in 2018 at the Visions du Réel Film Festival in Nyon (Switzerland).

(2) Interview with the Canadian Journal 24 hours 2018.