Troeller-Deffarge
Gordian Troëller and Marie-Claude Deffarge was large reporters of the written press and documentary realizers of .
Biographies
Gordian Troëller was combatant during the war of Spain. After the war, it creates a newspaper in Luxembourg, quickly choked by the authorities. Marie-Claude Deffarge and Gordian Troëller met after the war, in 1950. They started by working like large reporters for the written press. From 1959 to 1972 they traverse the world for the German magazine Stern , being interested as well in the societies' problems as with the political questions. At the time their reports were already known for their nonconformism. They work more particularly on the Yemen, where they carry out their first film in 1963 and to which they will devote a book, and on Iran. From years 1970 they decide to pass to the filmed report. Their first films, on the Liberation movements main road, are diffused in emissions of French television like “Five columns with the one”. A crushing argument is given to their French career when they denounce, in a film on Madagascar, the means used by the French to destroy the agricultural resources of the populations, making a parallel with the use of defoliants by the American army with the Vietnam.At the end of the Sixties, they make knowledge, in Iran, of François Partant which worked on development projects and called into question the bases even of its mission. This meeting will mark a turning in their work. From 1974 to 1984, they carry out the series “In the name of progress”: 22 films where they devote to a argued criticism Progrès and Développement in North as in the South. It was one of very first the attempt to carry out the documentary ones seriously argued on the economic plan. The reception made with this series was mitigated so much it appeared difficult, at the time, to call into question the new leaders of the Third world and the choices of development inspired by the Western model.
In parallel they launch out in the series “Planet of the women” (1979-1983) which joins together 12 films on the condition of the women in the world. The series “the children of the world” which includes/understands 35 films will be carried out between 1984 (it was the last film in which Marie-Claude Deffarge collaborated) and 1998. The whole of these films profited, on television public allemande, of a diffusion at one hour for great listening. Their work will receive several prices of the documentary one.
Their work methods were original. The team of turning was small. He worked without foot and lighting, in order to preserve the intimacy of the relationship with interviewed people. “I like to be delayed on people, on their visages' “, said Troëller. “a thing always surprises me: it would be said that they do not realize that I am filming them. It is perhaps because I walk while having constantly my camera to the hand. While filming, I speak: it is camera-which-causes “. A preliminary work was made before the departure (it was Marie-Claude Deffarge which took care some) then, on the spot, they were let guide by their instinct. Autodidact, Troëller affected a sovereign contempt for the technique. With those which reproached him an omnipresent comment, he answered that realities that he filmed asked an explanation, under penalty of conveying the usual stereotypes.
In fact, this work keeps through time a completely astonishing force and a coherence. Gordian Troeller and Marie-Claude Deffarge often saw and felt before the others the destruction which threatened many companies. But they wanted to also render comprehensible the world in its multiplicity. In a maintenance published in 1982 in the review Ciném' Action , Gordian Troeller expressed their vision: “More we observe “the different” companies, plus we have respect for them. They have all something to bring to us. Their disappearance is a drama, our crime. If it is a dream, for us, it would be the possibility for them of an evolution to their way, chosen by them, and that we would observe with friendship while asking us which moment could be made with them an exchange which would not be unequal “.
Works
Books
- Yemen 62-69: wild revolution with the truce of the warriors , Robert Laffont, 1969, Claude Deffarge and Gordian Troeller.
List films
Series “In the name of progress”
- impossible independence (Algeria) - 1975
- With the devil the school (Tanzania) - 1975
- the school of the devil (Togo) - 1975
- the medicine of the rich person at the poor (Africa) - 1975
- plundering (Gabon) -1976
- For better and for worse (Fos-sur-Mer) -1976
- the barrels overflow (France) -1976
- the seed of progress (the United States) -1983
- bitter Sucre (Brazil) - 1983
Series “Planet of the women”
Series “children of the world”
External bonds
- German Wikipedia page on Gordian Troëller.
- the German official site devoted to Gordian Troëller.
- Marie-Claude Deffarge in Yemen in 1963, emission of '' Five columns to '', files INA.
See too