LA VIE RETROUVÉE DE JEAN-DANIEL POLLET — Jean-Paul Fargier

“Autobiography” of Jean-Daniel Pollet by Jean-Paul Fargier

15 x 21 cm / 384 pages / March 1, 2020

isbn : 978-2-35137-284-5

In French only

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"This book is the story of Jean-Daniel Pollet's life, told by himself. This biography is therefore an autobiography that I've made up.

Based on what?

Over a period of seven or eight years, I listened to various people who had known this filmmaker, had lived through moments in his life, had contributed to his films, and gave me, in the form of fragments, moments shared with him, memories torn from their memories, words heard, unforgettable gestures.

Some spoke to me for just an hour, others for days on end. I was given photos, shown places. I visited houses, walked along paths where the footprints had not yet been erased.

I also had, right from the start, my stock of personal memories, accumulated from our first meeting in the spring of 1969, which he recounts in the last chapter of his story, to our final discussion, barely a month before his death.

I didn't know how to knead all these documents into a story. With what leaven to raise this dough? What projector would illuminate these images?

One day, or rather one night, I heard Jean-Daniel speak from his tomb.I began to listen.Things came out, in his head and in mine, with marvelous ease. He took control of the narrative, like the great narrator he had always been. He scattered details, mixed episodes, went from the comic to the tragic and vice versa, invented ellipses, forged repetitions, true to his course of modernity.

Death had taken away his dogmas and doubts. The afterlife gave him back his pride, his irony, his humor.

From his tomb, he recounted his new-found life."