Frédéric Chaleil

Direction Sud-Est follows L'Anniversaire de Bambou, the previous installment in Gérard Courant's Carnets filmés. It revisits some of the themes that made the earlier parts so charming: a passion for small towns and villages teeming with life (a market day in Saint-Marcellin) or deserted (Visan, Brignon), the importance of nature, an interest in the most mundane things (the sequence of magazine covers in a Saint-Marcellin newsstand), a love of animals (cats, dogs, horses), and interactions with artists (the actress Rosette, the journalist Frédéric Chaleil) through their daily lives.

Zones césariennes (which covers the year 2002) is one of Gérard Courant's Filmed Notebooks shot on film. These episodes now coexist with their counterparts filmed on videotape. They are two films with parallel lives but opposing destinies, colliding and eyeing each other warily. They represent two approaches, two styles, two different ways of understanding cinema. Two methods for unfolding time, grasping memory, and exploring the world.