Françoise Romand

Françoise Romand, born in Marseilles, is a French moviemaker.

Shot in 1985, Mix-Up ou Méli-Mélo gets success in the USA after its discovery by Vincent Canby (New York Times).[1] Famous journalist Jonathan Rosenbaum (Chicago Reader) selects it as the first one among his 10 best films of 1988 and among his 15 best films of the 1980s[2] together with Ridley Scott, Martin Scorsese, John Cassavetes, Chris Marker, Alain Resnais, Jean-Luc Godard… Shot in 1986, Appelez-moi Madame (Call Me Madame) gets a new success. In 2004, Rosenbaum selects Thème Je (The Camera I) as Best Undistributed Film in USA (Village Voice).[3] But Françoise Romand will have to wait until 2008 to begin to be recognized in her own country.[4]

Bio

Françoise Romand studied cinema at IDHEC (1974). In 1987, she gets a Villa Médicis Hors Les Murs in USA, and in 1995, a retrospective at the Film Center Art Institute (Museum of Chicago).

From Mix-up ou Méli-mélo to Thème Je (The Camera I),[5] she invents a new form of documentary mixing it with humor and fiction.

In 2000, after filming characters with peculiar life stories, Françoise Romand turns the camera on herself. Recall the switched babies in Mix-Up,[6] the communist poet becoming a woman with the help of his wife in Call Me Madame,[7][8] the old twins of The Crumbs of Purgatory still living with their parents, the exchange of lives of the two heroines of Vice Vertu et Vice Versa, the amnesia of Passe-Compose, etc. The Camera I echoes all these stories. Romand dissects family secrets, drags skeletons out of the closet, aims the camera on her lovers who hold mirrors up to her, on flinching humor. She directs herself, mixing as always fiction and documentary. With consummate sincerity, she knows at the same time that the cinema is an art of illusion, that truth is a trap and that people shot on the fly are only fantoms. Digital cinema allows her to shoot here outside of traditional production methods. To self-produce is a luxury! The director has to sell her apartment after her year teaching at Harvard. Exile inspires this creative introspection, ultimately freeing the bonds of imagination.

In 2009, Ciné-Romand[9][10] is a mise-en-abyme of her previous films. Spectators are invited to discover them at a happening that mixes fiction and reality as domestic theater. Voyeurs are not always who we think they are. Romand takes her inspiration from L’Arroseur Arrosé (The Sprinkler Sprinkled), continuing the role of her great-grandfather from La Ciotat, the playful kid who bent the hose to stop the water. After filming the spectators and tenants of the apartments where documentary scenes were improvised, Françoise Romand integrated them fictionally into excerpts from previous films, reworked in the editing. Guests/spectators, hosts, angels-guides, actors and technicians - all become characters in this fiction-documentary where Alice’s looking glass reflects a mischievous fantasy where the roles reversed and complementing one another.

She loves to work on sound with composers such as Nicolas Frize, Bruno Coulais, Jean-Jacques Birgé, as much as on images.

Films

References

  1. ↑ Vincent Canby on Mix-Up (New York Times, 07/24/1987)
  2. ↑ The Best Films by Jonathan Rosenbaum (Chicago Reader)
  3. ↑ The Camera I, best undistributed film in USA (6th Annual Film Critics' Poll, Village Voice, Dec.2004)
  4. ↑ Press Files on DVD Call Me Madame
  5. ↑ Robert Koehler on Thème Je (The Camera I) (Variety, 09/28/2004)
  6. ↑ Jean-Philippe Tessé on DVD Mix-Up (Les Cahiers du Cinéma, Dec.2006) and on DVD Mix-Up plus Call Me Madame (Chronic'art, Nov.2008)
  7. ↑ Jenny Ulrich on DVD Call Me Madame (Arte.tv, Oct.2008)
  8. ↑ Anita B. on Call Me Madame (Fluctuat.net, 11/24/1008)
  9. ↑ Charlotte Garson on Ciné-Romand and DVD Call Me Madame (Les Cahiers du Cinéma, Nov.2008)
  10. ↑ Antonio Fischetti on Ciné-Romand and Stéphane Bou on Call Me Madame (Charlie Hebdo, Dec.2008)

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External links

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