Xcèntric 2021
The camera as a pedagogical tool. Fernand Deligny
Audiovisuals
Attempting to find a language equivalent to the forms of autism, for Fernand Deligny cinema was a means of creating a system to transcribe the movements, gestures and movements of autistic children, tracing their continuous shifts and digressions without trying to represent them. For this educator, poet and ethologist, the camera was therefore a very important tool, not so much for documenting an educational action as for carrying out a pedagogical experiment.
Le moindre geste is a film that combines documentary and fictional elements, presenting education as an exercise in unframing. In it, we only see the wandering lines of Yves who, fleeing from shelter and the frame, has an adventure that escapes us. Deligny, interested more in processes than in the finished work, imagined a fable in four parts based on Yves, filming this with the help of Josée Manenti and Jean-Pierre Daniel in the area around his education laboratory located in the Cévennes region in southern France. Here, film and his camera became a way of mobilising and organising everyday life, in which filming became the predominant activity, a "weapon" against exclusion and standardisation.
Le moindre geste, Fernand Deligny, Josée Manenti and Jean-Pierre Daniel, 1971, 35 mm, 95 min.
Original language with Spanish subtitles. Film courtesy of Iskra Films and Centre national du cinéma et de l'image animée (CNC).
Directors: Fernand Deligny, Josée Manenti, Jean-Pierre Daniel
This activity is part of Xcèntric 2021
