Go, Toto!

Following the steps of an English botanist, in the landscapes of the Normandy coast, people and cameras look at flowers. This is an essay on attention and friendship, a cinematic herbarium.

Dairy controller in the "Secteur 545", Pierre Creton does the portrait of a rural existence devoid of picturesque reduction

Inland from the chalk plateau of Pays de Caux, the rituals of smoking hives and honey extraction are documented by an apprentice beekeeper, and a schoolboy watches from his classroom window over fields of rapeseed blown about by a coastal zephyr.

From his father, Pierre inherited a wood that he looks after and, in the middle of the wood, a cabin, his father’s old hunting lodge where Pierre now enjoys spending time alone with his dog.

A institutional documentary short made for the Committee for Studies and Care of People with Multiple Disabilities [CESAP] by Pierre Creton following disabled children during one summer.

Laurent, a young brigade commander in a gendarmerie in a small town in Normandy is planning his wedding with Marie, his partner and mother of his daughter. He loves his job despite facing social misery on a daily basis. One day, a farmer who might try to kill himself runs away.

African immigrants start working on a farm in Normandy and hope to open their own restaurant someday.

The journey of a young man as he begins an apprenticeship in the French countryside to train as a gardener. There he encounters a trio of men who will prove decisive in both his nascent career as a horticulturist and in unleashing his sexuality.

“It begins with an exhibition at the French Institute in Munich. We had decided to create an installation together [with Vincent Barré] in the greenhouse of the Seyssel d’Aix palace: a tribute to Paul Cézanne and his final model, the gardener Vallier….We spoke about the project with one of Vincent’s childhood friends, Christine Toffin, who reminded us that she was related to the painter. Her aunt, the painter’s granddaughter, still lived at Bourron-Marlotte. We decided to go and film Aline Cézanne in her retirement home at Bourron-Marlotte….It was during the sound editing that we thought of making a film using the images we had shot for the sound. The framing is minimal – it’s fine as it is, but it was not set up with a film in mind. A year later, we went back to see Aline. Her speech had become more confused and we went off with her to the village to find the houses of her childhood.”

“Yves Edouard is someone I hear a lot about. He’s a farmer and cereal grower, an endive producer…. He’s clearly a character out of a novel. One morning, I went to his farm and he hired me, as he needed someone to weed his endive fields….When I went to see him, I imagined constructing something romanesque and aesthetic. I had planned to film the work but this proved impossible. I then met Catherine Pernot, the friend of my friend Sophie Roger. I was enchanted by her way of talking about things, even the most ordinary ones. I described the work on the endive farm so that she could turn it into her own story. I recorded her and reworked her words to create a text that she then had to learn and act out in front of the camera. Next, I filmed an interview between Yves and myself. The film is thus composed of two sequence shots: Catherine, then Yves. As if they had slipped into their characters’ skin, she tells the story, he answers the questions.”

Portrait of the film-maker and visual artist Pierre Creton, who shoots films in the country of Caux, in Normandy, while taking on his agricultural tasks as a worker and farmer.

The comedienne Françoise Lebrun regularly comes to the Maniquerville gerontology center to read Proust to the residents. It is an opportunity for them to discuss together the memory of lost time. A strong bond develops between Françoise and Clara, the center’s host.

Pierre Creton placed his camera opposite the small black table that had always stood in the middle of the lawn facing the front of the house. He filmed himself gardening – potting plants, preparing cuttings. Cat, dog, donkey, hens are moving about, playing, resting around the table, the goat is prancing on the table top, the whole menagerie is living its life, crossing the frame freely. On these images of perfect insouciance, he edited the sound of a radio news report about the Fukushima disaster. The date is March 2011: here, the garden, the end of winter and the pleasure of plunging one’s hand into the earth, touching the plants, to prepare for spring’s arrival; over there, death, sky and sea contaminated for many years, untouchable. The garden is not at odds with the disaster provided it heeds its echo, albeit unwillingly. The garden table is also the altar where domestic rituals are performed to ward off the horror.

Beyond the visit of Yvetot Agricultural High School, a walk through a landscape that is both familiar and remarkable.

“It was on Foula, the furthest island from the main island [Shetland Isles], that we ran into Jovan. Or rather he ran into us, coming off the ferry late in the day. The mist was thick and we looked worn-out. He took us under his wing and offered to show us around the island the following day. There is a long sequence shot of the passing scenery, taken from inside his car. Driving along the only road, Jovan pointed out to Vincent the island’s disarray: abandoned cars and tractors, heaps of rusting scrap metal. Then on another island, Papa Stour, with a view of Foula, we filmed what was to become the first part of the film.”

“When FACIM (Foundation for international cultural activities in mountain regions) called me to propose making a film about Georges-Arthur Goldschmidt, I didn’t know him as a writer, only a little as a translator. So I immediately read his books, Le Recours and Le Poing dans la bouche, published by Verdier, which moved me deeply….I didn’t write a script. The commission was to film Georges-Arthur Goldschmidt in the places he arrived at in France during the war, in Megève, and his relationship to the region, which is very present in his books. I filmed him from day to day over four days. On returning to the places of his childhood exile, he met the families who had helped him survive, people his own age who were children at the time, whose memories were reconstituted together.”