Introduction

"Au Pays Des Visages" is a documentary by French director Frédéric Rossif, dedicated to the life and work of the renowned and award-winning German-born photographer Gisèle Freund (1908-2000). The music for this documentary was composed by Vangelis. Even though Vangelis is not credited for his music in the film, it is unmistakably his. Some of the music heard in this documentary is sourced from either “Cantique Des Créatures” (1970) or “Georges Mathieu Ou La Fureur d'Être” (1971), but most is original music.

The documentary focuses on the photography of Gisèle Freund, who fled the Nazi-regime in Germany in 1933. She received a PhD at the Sorbonne in Paris, and pioneered in portrait-photography including photos of Andre Malraux, Boris Pasternak, Walter Benjamin, Virginia Woolf, Eva Peron, Samuel Beckett and James Joyce to name but a few. In 1940 again she escaped the nazis and fled from the south of France to Argentina. Later she also worked in Mexico and returned to Paris after the war, where she wrote several books on photography, some of these autobiographical.

Frédéric Rossif is known for his distinctive documentaries about art and culture made for French television in the 1970s and 1980s. Other such documentaries with a Vangelis score include “Georges Mathieu Ou La Fureur d'Être” (1971), “Georges Braque Ou Le Temps Différent (1974), Pablo Picasso Peintre (1981) and Morandi (1989).

Details and credits

• Title: Au Pays Des Visages
• Year: 1972
• Country: France
• Length: 45 minutes
• Directed by Frédéric Rossif
• General direction: Jean-Charles Cuttoli
• Cinematography: Georges Barsky
• Sound Engineer: Augusto Galli
• Montage: Geneviève Winding
• Assistent montage: Gisèle Chezeau
• Music by Vangelis Papathanassiou
• Text by Mando Aravantinou
• Dialog by Martine Sarcey and Pierre Vaneck
• Producer: Michelle Wiart
• Assistent producer: Jean Mylonas
• Produced by Télé Hachette and Bayerischer Rundfunk.

Media

Unfortunately this documentary has never been released after its original TV-broadcast.

Synopsis

Frédéric Rossif has attempted to approach the immense work of Gisèle Freund and introduces us to the German photographer, then sixty-four years old and a refugee in Paris. She is filmed and shown at work, that is, capturing what fascinates her: the face. The title 'Au Pays Des Visages' gives the clue, and directs the film towards the literary figures she admirably photographed, from James Joyce to Virginia Woolf, Adrienne Monnier, Walter Benjamin, André Malraux, and so many others. We are voluptuously carried away to this country populated by a thousand faces that we discover or recognize, in the quotes, in the landscape cutaways, and in the interviews. The somewhat dictionary-like presentation of the artists, the two intertwining voices of the commentators, take us into a bygone era. A historical film that today's sensibilities receive with emotion and surprise.

Gallery