While Raymond Depardon was roaming France in his van, waiting for the right light, sometimes for hours, his wife, Claudine Nougaret getting impatient, started her own project.

After 25 years of working together—Nougaret recorded sound while Depardon took care of the images—she knows where he keeps outtakes from his films. She also knows that he has long wanted to revisit them. Both in his photography and his films, Depardon has never stopped questioning his own work, the ethics of the image, and the different ways to document a changing society. Since leaving the family farm in 1962, he has always been questioning.

We are witness to his attempts to answer these questions in this new DVD, from Venezuela in 1963 to his banned 1974 film on the presidential campaign of Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, from the Tibesti mountains to his journeys across France.

Bernard Perrine

Read the full text of this article on the French version of Le Journal.

DVD
Journal de France
Claudine Nougaret & Raymond Depardon
Arte Éditions