The passion and humour of Philibert's documentary films gently restore your faith in the world
Fans of great documentaries owe a huge debt to the French TV station Canal+. For it was they who bankrolled the career of Nicolas Philibert, chronicler of everything from tortoises to teachers to taxidermists, some of whose back catalogue can now be enjoyed in the comfort of your own home.
Philibert came to public attention this side of the channel nine years ago, after winning an Oscar nomination for �tre et Avoir, about a teacher in an Auvergne school managing to stay calm while wrangling a dozen children aged four to 11. Its compassion, humour and lurching flashes of tragedy proved irresistible, and the film found distribution in 40 countries. It proved so popular, in fact, that the teacher, and some of the children's parents, launched an unsuccessful lawsuit in pursuit of a bigger slice of the profits.
Philibert likes to train his lens on those who have trouble expressing themselves: one documentary is set in a school for the hard of hearing; another follows the staging of a play in a mental institution. For his most recent, N�nette, Philibert upped the stakes: his leading lady is a 40-year-old zoo-bound orangutan (the audio is drawn from the musings of humans gazing at her through the glass). This beguiling box set contains that film, �tre et Avoir, plus two beautiful curios: Animals, a woozy, hour-long wobble round the zoology gallery of Paris's Natural History Museum; and La Ville Louvre, a surrealist peek behind the scenes at the famous museum. Back to Normandy, an atypically personal revisiting of the location for a shoot on which he was assistant director in 1976, rounds the set off.
What distinguishes Philibert's work is its benevolence. To watch his films is to have your faith in the world quietly bolstered. Inanimate objects become full of life, workaday institutions become utopias.
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/tv-and-radio/2011/jun/17/nicolas-philibert-collection
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