Modern Life
The farming world is often torn between age-old traditions and industrialisation, the passing of the torch and technological change, family-run businesses and corporate conglomerates, the rural communities it inhabits and the cities it feeds, environmental challenges and the drive for profitability... All these issues are reflected in this program, which highlights how many recent films from Québec and France have looked at the agricultural world, capturing its essential, resilient, and sometimes painful aspects.
Winner of the 2008 Louis Delluc Prize
Through a series of portraits, Raymond Depardon becomes a witness to farmers’ lives, values, and family stories: all that binds them to the land, and its legacy. He questions what will become of these people of the land.
Raymond Depardon
Raymond Depardon is a French photographer, filmmaker, journalist, and screenwriter. A documentary filmmaker and reporter, he co-founded the photojournalism agency Gamma in 1966. He has been a member of Magnum Photos since 1979. Two of his early films document the inner workings of the press: Numéros zéro (1977) depicts the launch of a new daily newspaper, while Reporters (1981) follows Gamma’s photographers throughout October 1980, as they balance covering hard news with chasing celebrities for paparazzi shots. Depardon has explored nearly every documentary genre and directed many significant films, turning his humanistic lens toward Chad, in La captive du désert (1990), as well as psychiatric wards, emergency rooms, courthouses, and the struggles of the rural community from which he hails. He has received numerous accolades, including the Grand Prix national de la photographie, several César Awards, the Louis Delluc Prize, and the Prix Nadar.
