Projet N

Both an account of the life of a network of autistic children and a documentary on the 1970s and final years of the back-to-the-land movement.

The Institut national de l’audiovisuel (INA) and Thierry Garrel offered to produce a television documentary about the network that was more “explicit” than Ce gamin, là had been. Deligny did not want a professional crew and contacted Alain Cazuc, who had arrived in the network in 1973. He had studied the sociology of art and was earning his living as a photographer. At Monoblet, while living with the autistic children, he looked after the part of the network organisation that dealt with filmmaking. “For Projet N [N for NOUS (WE in English)], he said, I had a starting framework which involved presenting the places, and among these, a key moment, at Le Serret, and the way that what happened there was re-transcribed onto the maps. During the filming, we had the idea of going camping with the children in a new place, to see what fell with the realm of the habitual and routine, how landmarks were re-created, how these are transposed through other rituals.” One of the key scenes of the film set in the shelter in Le Serret, shows the adult’s extreme attention (under the guise/feigned of indifference) to the smallest gestures and movements of the autistic children busying themselves with the task in hand (preparing pancake batter). The scene is a crucial testimony on the common body formed by the adults’ adjustment to the particular mode of being of autistic children.
Sandra Alvarez de Toledo