San Clemente
Raymond Depardon, Sophie Ristelhueber
© Palmeraie et desert
In San Clemente, in a psychiatric hospital on an island off the coast of Venice, patients live freely. They even take part in the Venice Carnival. Except that the hospital is now threatened with closure...
Image : Raymond Depardon
Sound : Sophie Ristelhueber
Editing : Olivier Froux
Sound : Sophie Ristelhueber
Editing : Olivier Froux
Distribution: Palmeraie et désert
“Raymond Depardon took a series of photos in 1977 in a psychiatric hospital that has occupied the small Venetian island of San Clemente since 1880. He decided to return there two years later with a camera and tape recorder. He is in the frame, camera on shoulder, and Sophie Ristelhueber, who made the film with him, holds the Nagra and the microphone. (...) Depardon's eye composes a narrative without commentary, without dramaturgy, without didactic will. The simplicity of the means, the absence of obvious guidelines, the rigour of the shots in their duration produce the opposite effect of a simple report: the film becomes, with the risk of aestheticism that this entails, an eminently artistic object.” (Vincent Ostria; Les Inrocks)