Dim Dam Dom

Duras, ever the challenging interviewer, forensically questions a Parisian zookeeper regarding the happiness of the animals in his charge. Intercut with her questions is stark black-and-white footage of the animals themselves behind bars, as they pace the length of their small concrete enclosures. Duras is very much on the side of the big cats. “Are you ever careless?” she asks the zookeeper. When he replies in the negative, Duras says smilingly: “In your position I’d be tempted to be careless”.

In this episode of Dim Dam Dom, Duras interviews the stripper Lolo Pigalle. A clip of Lolo dancing in a golden dress is followed by an intense and intimate conversation in which Lolo discusses the definition of work, the splitting of the self, and acting vs. sex work.

During this strange and confrontational interview, Duras takes on France’s only female prison warden. In the women’s verbal wrangling we find reflected many contemporary concerns surrounding the ongoing moral disaster of the prison industrial complex.

Here Duras assumes a more distant role, less an interviewer than an invested documentarian. Her questions precede footage of her main subject, the sixteen-year-old Romain Goupil, recently excluded from the lycée, among his peers and fellow student revolutonaries. After we see them discuss the complexities of their position and deal with internal dissent, Duras asks Romain if he ever forgets how young he is. Romain replies with a grin: “Totally.”

Duras interviews an exhausted Jeanne Moreau, addressing her friend as vous, despite the fact "the two were close friends for many years, living in neighbouring houses and cooking for each other from the early ‘60s.

The Nativity revisited by Chantal Goya and Serge Gainsbourg as biblical lovers! On New Year's Eve, Marie and Joseph wander through the cold Parisian streets... Exhausted, they take refuge in the Vaugirard slaughterhouse, where the night watchman offers them a spot of straw. Suddenly Marie doesn't feel well... Don't underestimate the absurdity and quirkiness of a Gainsbourg in panic!

Homage to the novelist Delly, to celebrate her centenary, a mini-soap opera (silent photo-novel style with bubbles) with Françoise Dorléac in the role of the orphan Garlonne and Jacques Dutronc in that of the young director Alban.

Friendships, games, boredom, first emotions: the playground.