Visions du Réel will pay tribute to French author, filmmaker and screenwriter Emmanuel Carrère during its 52ndedition in April 2021 by awarding him the prestigious Honorary Award (previously named the Prix Maître du Réel).
The homage will include a masterclass, a ‘carte blanche’ of films that influenced Carrère’s own work and a presentation of his documentary Retour à Kotelnitch (2003), and will be presented during the 52nd edition of the Festival taking place from 15 to 25 April 2021. The Cinémathèque suisse (National Film Archive) and the ECAL (University of Art and Design Lausanne) are partners with Visions du Réel in offering this invitation.
In a statement Visions du Réel stresses how the choice of Emmanuel Carrère as Guest of Honour for the 2021 edition “reflects the Festival’s profound ambition to further and relentlessly extend its exploration of the notion of reality, through different forms and incarnations, be they cinematographic or literary.”
Explains festival director Emilie Bujès: “Whether in his publications, or in his approach to image and film, even fiction, Carrère is primarily concerned with fragments of life, with extracts of ‘reality’, which emerge implicitly, that he seizes by adopting a position of subjective witness. Talking in the first person of those women and men who don’t resemble him, seeking out the possibility of being a ‘community’ in the writing of this irreducible difference, inevitably brings this author closer to the familiar practices and processes of contemporary non-fiction filmmaking.”
Born in Paris in 1950, Emmanuel Carrère studied at the Institute of Political Studies before engaging in military service in Indonesia. Back in France he began his career as a film critic for the magazines Positif and Télérama. From 1982, he began to develop a distinctive authorial style starting with a monograph devoted to Werner Herzog before writing the biographical essay ‘I Am Alive and You Are Dead: A Journey into the Mind of Philip K. Dick’ (1993) and ‘The Adversary: A True Story of Monstrous Deception’. The latter was adapted into a film in 2002 by Nicole Garcia and became the first major success of his career.
Thereafter, Emmanuel Carrère navigated between the different media with curiosity and ease; as well as being a journalist and a writer, he is a screenwriter and a filmmaker. His first feature-length film Retour à Kotelnitch (2003), selected for Venice, blends Russian history with his personal biography. In 2005, he adapted his own novel The Moustache (presented at Directors’ Fortnight), with Vincent Lindon and Emmanuelle Devos.
“Throughout his works in many forms, Carrère (who was awarded the prestigious Prix Renaudot for ‘Limonov: The Outrageous Adventures in 2011’ – has brilliantly questioned the opacity of fiction and the strangeness of the tangible world,” notes the festival. His latest book ‘Yoga’ is an intimate and abrasive observation, “not bereft of humour”, on the state of the contemporary world and the tormented souls who populate it. Based on the documentary work of the journalist Florence Aubenas, his new film Le quai de Ouistreham, starring Juliette Binoche, will be released in 2021.
The homage is organised in collaboration with La Cinémathèque suisse, which will present films directed or scripted by Emmanuel Carrère, and with ECAL, which will co-host the 3-hour Masterclass given during the Festival. Among other things, this time of discussion will provide an opportunity to explore Emmanuel Carrère’s relationship with reality, image and film.
Created in 2014, the Prix Maître du Réel awards the body of work of a filmmaker who has been as active in the field of documentary film as in that of fiction. From Claire Denis in 2020 to Werner Herzog for the Festival’s 50th edition (in 2019), as well as Claire Simon, Peter Greenaway, Alain Cavalier, Barbet Schroeder or Richard Dindo, all of the Maîtres du Réel “have helped to broaden the spectrum of cinematographic possibilities.”
In 2021, the prize and the homage are being renamed in a desire for simplification and openness, the festival underlines. Emmanuel Carrère will therefore become the first “Guest of Honour” for Visions du Réel.
Emmanuel Carrère’s works:
Werner Herzog, 1982 (essay, monograph)
The Jaguar’s Friend, 1983 (novel)
Gothic Romance, 1984 (novel)
The Mustache, 1986 (novel)
The Behring Strait, 1986 (essay)
Out of Reach, 1988 (novel)
I Am Alive and You Are Dead: A Journey into the Mind of Philip K. Dick, 1993 (biography dedicated to P.K. Dick)
Class Trip, 1995 (novel)
La Classe de neige, by Claude Miller, 1998, (adapted from the novel)
The Adversary, A True Story of Monstrous Deception, 2000 (account)
The Adversary, by Nicole Garcia, 2002 (adapted from the novel)
Le Soldat perdu, 2003 (TV Report)
Retour à Kotelnitch, 2003 (film)
The Moustache, 2005 (film)
My Life as a Russian Novel, 2007 (account)
Lives Other Than My Own, 2009 (account)
Limonov: The Outrageous Adventures, 2011 (account)
The Kingdom, 2014 (account)
97,196 Words, 2016 (account)
Yoga, 2020 (account)
Le Quai de Ouistreham, planned release 2021 (film)
