Pierre Creton

7 Walks with Mark Brown

(Pierre Creton & Vincent Barré)

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

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

Upcoming Screening

Montreal – McGill University – January 28

Past Screenings

2024
New York Film Festival (North American Premiere)

Toronto – TIFF Wavelengths (Canadian Premiere)
2025

Montreal Critic’s Week – January 2025

Missoula, Montana – Big Sky Doc Festival – February 2025

Ithaca, NY – Finger Lakes Environmental Film Festival – April 3 & 13 2025

Montreal – Cinéma Moderne – May 3 & 13

Chicago – Doc Films – May 24

NYC – L’Alliance – June 18 – Creton & Barré in person

NYC – BAM Cinemas – June 20 – 26, 2025
Creton & Barré in person – First Ever U.S. Retrospective

Cleveland – Cleveland Cinematheque – July 13

Portland, Maine – SPACE – July 14

Vancouver – The Cinematheque – August 15, 20, 25

Philadelphia – Lightbox Film Center – September 10

Los Angeles – Acropolis at 2220 Arts – September 13

2026
NYC – Museum of the Moving Image – January 11

A Beautiful Summer + Go, Toto! + Maniquerville + Secteur 545

4 feature films by Pierre Creton

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

The Short Films of Pierre Creton & Vincent Barré

“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).

“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.”

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.

“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.”

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.

“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.

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.

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.