Labore Nobile

This distinctly personal journey into the artistic possibilities of independent film is not to be missed. Jonas Mekas, Jean-Pierre Gorin, Robert Kramer and many other visionaries and mavericks of the silver screen – as well as a book seller, a critic and a psychoanalyst – discuss what cinema has meant to them, what it is and what it could be and, implicitly, how it has changed over the 18 years in which this film was shot. Director Boris Lehman leads the charge, drawing in moments of absurdist humour and inventive camera work; he keeps things raw and spontaneous. His encounters with the now much-missed Jean Rouch and Stephen Dwoskin are particularly touching and stand testament to their personal playfulness and candour. An engaging, absorbing, epic odyssey of a movie.

A lonely horseman arrives in a far away country, looking for a land to settle down. Clement is my older brother. He became a farmer in France, far from the suburbs of Paris, where we grew up. Since then we went on distant ways. I suggest to make a film together.

Portrait of Richard Kenigsman by Boris Lehman.

A day in the life of director Boris Lehman: he wanders from cafe to bookshop, cinema to museum, writer to musician, and into the storeroom of the film archive... He celebrates his birthday in an alleyway, with a friend, and finishes his journey with an escapade to Bruges and a stroll by the North Sea. The camera plays dirty tricks and the sound recorder gets carried away, to the point that both are clearly telling Boris to stop filming. Yet he persists…