Pierre Creton

“Pierre Creton’s cinema springs from this solidarity between life and art, sealed by necessity.”

Cahiers du Cinéma

7 Walks with Mark Brown

Pierre Creton & Vincent Barré | 2024 | 104 minutes | In French with English subtitles | DCP

“Shows us an exquisite microcosm of existence, containing rich history, meaning, and mystery.” – RogerEbert.com

Accompanied by a small crew, Creton and Barré follow paleobotanist Mark Brown across seven locations in Normandy as he seeks out native plants from which an ancient garden could be created and explains, with the loving tenderness of a true expert, the etymology, beauty, and scientific properties of the region’s flora.

Mark Brown: “Capitalism leads to death and our extinction.”

A Beautiful Summer

Pierre Creton | 2019 | 81 minutes | In French with English subtitles | DCP

Robert, Simon, and Sophie lead routine lives in the pastoral green of Normandy’s Pays de Caux region. African refugees arrive and are embraced by the tight knit community.

Va, Toto!

Pierre Creton | 2017 | 94 minutes | In French with English subtitles | DCP

The arrival of the piglet Toto causes a stir, Vincent travels to India and spends time with monkeys, Joseph can begin to dream, thanks to his sleep apnea machine.

Maniquerville

Pierre Creton | 2009 | 84 minutes | In French with English subtitles | DCP

Legendary French actress Françoise Lebrun regularly comes to the Maniquerville gerontology center to read Proust’s In Search of Lost Time to the residents. The trick here is the way in which the residents of the facility are, in some ways, listening to their very own lives being narrated to them, painting the very concept of a facility for elders as a true Proustian dwelling.

Secteur 545

Pierre Creton | 2005 | 105 minutes | In French with English subtitles | DCP

What differentiates man and animal? Creton investigates that question and gives a naturalistic portrait of rural life, during his time as a milk quality controller.

The Short Films of Pierre Creton & Vincent Barré

Pierre Creton, 2008

“I had literally planned my meeting with Jean Lambert. Very quickly, I feared he would die; hadn’t he tried to warn me: choosing such an old friend? At night, we listened to javas until the fear dissipated… In any case, we had a good laugh, facing the camera, that was stupidly filming us. Seven years after Jean’s death, still in his house… A certain type of daily life (fixed hours, same people, forms and places of worship) brought about supernatural thoughts.”

Note from Vincent: The trick is that Berger is a French drink. The ad used to say “Midi, sept heure, l’heure du Berger.” Midday, seven pm, time for a Berger! (Both the first star when the shepherd brings back the herd to the shelter, and the drink).

Pierre Creton, 2021

“One day, I no longer know why, I thought of Bertrand, a film student. He had filmed long static shots in the house where we had made love. Forty years later, I put back on Jean Lambert’s record player (the only object of his that I have left) Variations pour une porte et un soupir that Bertrand had paired with his shots.

Then, from the house in Vattetot-sur-Mer, House of Love appeared to me: a slow circular vision inscribed in the center of three places, united in a loving geometry in time and space. A magic lantern as haunting as an enigma, with views, objects, that come back; which we wait for, but which change constantly according to the light, to the noises (the wind), the furtive life of animals. Those who are absent find themselves there.”

Pierre Creton & Vincent Barré, 2016

At the first light of dawn before harvest, the grain farmers are still asleep. The only light in the village is that of the bakery where Simon is at work. Saint Roch appears.

Pierre Creton, 2020

“I met Pierre twenty-five years ago, when I set my booth next to his in the market; he sold poultry and eggs, I sold flowers and honey. I asked his son Arnaud if it would be possible to follow them and film the flax harvest.”

Pierre Creton & Vincent Barré, 2005

In the distance, it’s Foula. The path has brought us to meet Jovan, who is driving us across the island. The island is a labyrinth and a game of progression; chaotic, always hindered, toward an impossible center.

But the center is a traveler, and the passage exists.

Pierre Creton & Vincent Barré, 2006

“More flowers, more steps and phrases about flowers, and what’s more, always more or less the same steps, the same phrases?”

You have to imagine the film, in its journey, its pace, its stops, its ups and downs. Three weeks of walking in one of the highest places in the world – the Spiti Valley, in the Himalayas; sequences of flowers filmed like a herbarium, punctuated by the sounds of the villages.

Pierre Creton, 2005

Upon the death of his father, Pierre, with his friends Marie and Bénaïd, travels to Vézelay to visit the grave of Georges Bataille. There, they are recognized by a priest who seems to distinguish tourists from mystics, those who come for God and those who come for the writer.

Pierre Creton & Vincent Barré, 2014

At the end of winter, a walker leaves home and hikes across the contrasting landscapes of three regions, from the sea to the mountains, until he reaches the house of the poet Gustave Roud. From the approach of beings to the apparition of the ghost.