In the documentary “Un Film Dramatique”, the artist Éric Baudelaire fulfills the task of creating a special work of art for Dora Maar, a newly built secondary school in the Paris suburb of Saint-Denis. For the project, Baudelaire filmed 21 students over four years and encouraged them to take the camera themselves. The finished film shows the liveliness and generosity that can emerge from bourgeois art.
The film passes in informal episodes. The filmmakers organized games and debates, and encouraged their classmates to discuss what they think the film will be about. Students consider what it means to be the subject and creator of a documentary and, in turn, calculate how their school fits into the world around them.
These youths are workers, often the children of immigrants, and they mock the bad reputation Saint-Denis has in Paris. With cameras in hand, they make their own record of what life is like in the suburbs. They dance, they sing, they offer house tours. Every child is confident, curious and cooperative.
The film has a patchwork quality that results from getting in and out from the perspective of different people. Some scenes are exciting when the Franco-Romanian student Gabriel-David debates through his Franco-Ivorian classmate Guy-Yanis what it means to have a country of origin if you have never lived there. But just as many sequences are banal – children film themselves watching TV as if they were streaming live on Instagram.
It is the cumulative effect of seeing the world through the eyes of these children that makes this film so profoundly joyful. This is an encouraging project, a philosophical excavation of a school marked by playful optimism.
A dramatic film
Not rated. In French with subtitles. Running time: Running time: 1 hour 54 minutes. Watch virtual cinemas.
