Para leer también

The following text is the introduction to the book accompanying the En psychiatrie DVD box set, which brings together the following films by Nicolas Philibert: Sur L’Adamant (2023), Averroès & Rosa Parks (2024), La machine à écrire et autres sources de tracas (2024), and La moindre des choses (1997).

More than a quarter of a century separates the filming of La moindre des choses (Every Little Thing), in summer 1995, from three films I directed as a kind of triptych made within the Paris Centre psychiatric service: Sur l’Adamant (On the Adamant), Averroès & Rosa Parks and La machine à écrire et autres sources de tracas (The Typewriter and Other Headaches).

The first has its origins in a battle I had to wage with myself, because I couldn’t see – or didn’t want to see – how one could film in psychiatry. In truth, I couldn’t imagine myself doing it! The second reflects a strong desire to revisit what the first had awakened years earlier and left fallow. The final two, which weren’t planned, emerged naturally in the wake of the first.

There’s nothing to say that I’ll limit myself to that, but better not to think of it. The future isn’t set in stone.

I’ve often talked about how greatly I hesitated before throwing myself into what would become La moindre des choses and which was still just, at the start, a film at La Borde. Forgive me for coming back to it here, because from this back-and-forth came everything that followed.

I’d got the idea from a couple of friends and, at the beginning, I was fiercely against it. I knew perfectly well that the La Borde clinic was a place open to every kind of experiment but the mere thought of bringing a camera into such a place struck me as misguided. If people had landed there, it was to be left in peace. And why not say it now: I was afraid. Afraid of losing my footing, of going over the edge myself, in turn. Wouldn’t they discover that I had things going on in my head too? Wouldn’t they want to keep me there?

My friends brought it up again. Several times. They had worked for a long time at La Borde and thought it had to be done, that people ought to learn about this practice, against the grain, of welcoming madness, so menaced. My scruples were to my credit, they said, but I should go beyond them, and begin by dropping by. It didn’t mean I was committed to anything. Once there, taken by the singular atmosphere of the place, perhaps I’d find a way to approach it! What else? I knew nothing about the place? Precisely!

I finally gave in and went to spend a couple of days there. It’s quite something to find yourself in psychiatry, even as a visitor: the distress of some of the patients is ike a slap in the face. It was winter. The weather was cold. Outside the light was gloomy, the lawn a vast field of mud, and banks of mist were covering the tops of the trees. It was already dark before night fell. Sometimes, a silhouette emerged from the forest and remained standing there, some distance from the château, swaddled in improbable layers. I wasn’t exactly at ease and yet, how to say it? There was something relaxing there, a gentleness, a feeling of freedom, no walls, no white coats, no exterior sign allowing one to separate patients from carers. With some people, you knew; with others, you hesitated. I didn’t dare to ask. They asked me:“Oh, you’re a filmmaker? You’ve come to make a film about us?” “I don’t know. Perhaps. We’ll see. It’s too soon.” I stuttered. On the second day, Jean Oury, the great pyschiatrist, received me: “So, young man, I hear you want to make a film here?” “Uh, no. I mean I…”

Two months later, I’d returned for a few days and word had spread meanwhile that I was thinking about making a film. The residents encouraged me: they’d be there, they’d help me! Little by little my preconceptions vanished. The idea of taking the plunge, of confronting my own fear, my scruples, my dreams and my doubts, and “problematising” them as people say, began to gain ground. The rest is well known: I would decide to anchor myself to the theatre project which allowed me, each year, to get through the summer. I’d therefore have a guiding thread. A scaffold. For two months, La Borde would live according to the rhythm of rehearsals with their highs and lows, their obstacles to surmount, the assurance of some, the apprehension of others, the stage fright, the adrenaline, the moments of joy, the hysterical laughter. Inevitably, this theatrical adventure would expose the men and women who would take part, but at the same time protect them. The fiction, the settings, the make-up and costumes would provide a screen. Everyone would be sheltered by their own character. The presence of a camera now seemed possible to me, because I didn’t doubt that those who were willing to step on stage would accept, at the same time, to be filmed. However, nothing was less certain: a live performance, ephemeral by definition, leaves no trace. Not the same traces, in any case. I’d still need to take every precaution…

What would I have become if, at seventeen, I hadn’t started to cast longing glances at the cinema? What would I have made of my life if I hadn’t had the chance, two years later, to be taken on as an intern on a film? What would my path have been if I hadn’t been allowed to film backstage at the Louvre? If I hadn’t come across the world of the deaf and immediately wanted to learn sign language? If I hadn’t persisted in wanting to film in a village school with a classe unique [single class]? At the ménagerie of the Jardin des Plantes? Until now, each film I’ve made has been an experience that has carried me, helped me grow, extended my field of vision, allowed me to reflect on the world, on myself, and helped me keep going. Each has kept me alert, kept me on my toes and brought immense joy.

Those I filmed in the psychiatric sphere are no exception. On the contrary, they upended my way of being in the world. They dislodged me, disorientated me, sowed doubt, compelled me to revise all my plans. With time, this instability has become imperative for me. I’ve made it the fuel for my films. To revitalise “my” cinema, I had – I have – to be unbalanced. I was going to say: “disturbed”.

All these years after La Borde, the three films that are Sur l’Adamant, Averroès & Rosa Parks and La machine à écrire et autres sources de tracas express this need. They’re vagabond films. Born in the realm of the unpredictable, they sprouted like weeds, without a prior framework, at the mercy of chance, of encounters and adventures, of shifting moods and moments of complicity. They speak of the desire which I had, when I made them, to surrender to a profound trust in the present.

Psychiatry is a strange place for encounters. You meet all sorts of people whose lives have taken a battering, fragile ones, sensitive ones who move through life like tightrope walkers and lead us to lands whose existence we’ve repressed. Some don’t say a word, but keep an eye on everything. Others don’t pull their punches while they’re tellling you like it is. You can’t fool them! In the art of uncovering shams, they’re the first in line. I took a while to admit it to myself, but if they touch me so greatly, it’s above all because they show me my own vulnerabilities. And because they make us confront ourselves.

A quotation comes to me. It’s by Serge Daney: “And cinema, I can clearly see why I adopted it: so it would adopt me in return. So that it would teach me to touch, tirelessly, with my gaze, to discover at what distance from myself the other begins.”

That’s precisely it.