THE GAME OF TRUTHS
The question of truth is core to the history of documentary forms, at least since Dziga Vertov made the “kino-pravda” into a tool for mechanically and authentically observing the world, and before his terminology inspired the project of Edgar Morin and Jean Rouch for a “cinéma-vérité” that espouses human subjectivities up close. The quest is even more pivotal, and in an entirely different register, now that the document – visual more than audio – is called on as “irrefutable evidence” supporting a media and legal rhetoric.
Architects, authors, filmmakers, theatre directors and researchers are invited to this third edition of Festival Conversations to question the value of truth that is ascribed to the documentary. Their approaches based on surveys, archive material and testimonies, all develop complex thinking on truth – not as knowledge and expertise but as a shared and open horizon, welcoming uncertainties, grey areas, and sometimes also silence. This documentary art facing the battle of truths will be queried on its relationship to evidence and testimony in a first round table on the role of the document in the legal, historical or political rhetoric on truth. A second round table will focus on the detours of the documentary via stories, re-enactments or fictions that open up myriad bypaths towards as many singular truths.
Alice Leroy