Le Village – saison deux (work in progress)

In Lussas, Jean-Marie Barbe is a visionary and an entrepreneur. Twenty-seven years ago, he was behind the creation of the Etats Généraux du documentaire, a film festival to which students, cinephiles and documentary film professionals flock each summer. Over the course of all these summers, the village turns into a film festival. But more than that. Today, in Lussas, more than 40 people live off documentary film, buoyed by Jean-Marie’s charisma. This documentary community dotted along the village’s only street will soon be moving and group together on the hillock overlooking the village. It will host various activities, including the new Tënk platform. This is a new step for the documentary village, and for the village itself. How does a new activity invent, develop and build itself? Are the world of culture and the world of agriculture really very different? Are the people from here and those from elsewhere building the same future for their village? What is a modern village? These are some of the questions that run through Claire Simon’s long-term project, the Le Village series. The filmmaker weaves connections between the people of the land and the people of the documentary, between the busiest periods and the quieter moments, the ups and downs of daily life and the decisive phases of the Tënk project, the memories of Jean-Marie Barbe and his projects aimed at a 100-year horizon. She constructs a novel-like chronicle that accurately portrays our times.

Catherine Bizern