DOUBLURE (LA)

of ACCETTONE Jean-Louis

FRANCE, 2006, 00:11:42

Production : EQUIPE MONAC UN
Genre : Video art
Keyword : War, Memory, Resistance, Society

Summary :
1942. Léon Brun is arrested, like so many other french communist militants. Without any lawsuit, he is convicted to 20 years of hard labour; and lead away to Sieburg detention center, in Germany. Beaten, tortured, ill, he would never come back from the hell of the camp. Esther Brun, his wife, has also been arrested, a bit later, for her militant activities. She has been locked up in France, and then in a work camp in Germany, at Oranienburg, where she spent one year. At the Liberation of the camps by the Allies, Esther could return in France, weaken by the inhuman life conditions she had been enduring for one year. After the war, the clothes of her husband are given back to Esther. Among these clothes, one jacket. Some years later, Esther unpicked the jacket, in order to make short trousers to dress one of her two children. Inside the lining, the material was covered with a pen writing. Léon had written a letter, day by day, during his captivity. I had the chance to meet Esther Brun in 2000, and to film her regularly to record her testimony as a member of the Resistance. She was then 96 years old, had incredible memory and elocution. I filmed the interviews without asking myself any question about the becoming of these images. It was, before anything, about recording, keeping, archiving. I still don’t have given any form to these interviews. One day, Esther told me about the letter, directly written on the lining of the jacket of her husband. Then she lent me the material piece, which I could film. I also recopied the letter. Today, I created a document eleven minutes long from this letter. I created images from the recovered lining, and also from landscapes seen from behind the bars of a window, in low-angle shot. These landscapes are mainly skies, clear, rainy, gray, stormy. You can also see archive images of Esther, Léon, and their children, a cat going by. The day goes, the night goes, the birds go (Jean-Louis Accettone).

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