THE SUPER 8 YEARS
| 2022 – 62′ – DOCUMENTARY
Written by: Annie Ernaux, David Ernaux-Briot.
Directed by: Annie Ernaux.
Official Competition Director’s Fortnight Cannes 2022. West Coast Premiere COLCOA 2021.
In French with English subtitles.
A Kino Lorber Release. |
The Super 8 Years revolves around the emotional power of home movies. This time it’s the family memoir of accomplished French author Annie Ernaux. It begins in 1972, when Annie and her husband, Philippe, purchase a Bell & Howell Super 8 movie camera. It was a treasure more coveted than a dishwasher or color TV, she tells us, because film can capture life. Given prevailing gender roles, it was automatically assumed that Philippe would operate the pricey equipment. Like most amateur cameramen, his subject matter revolved around family holidays, birthdays and especially summer vacations. Often a chronicle of shifting political and cultural thought in France over those years, Annie’s simple, often touching voice-over narration also reveals the poignant story of her own evolution as a writer and a woman — at first writing in secret, then publishing her first books, right through the dissolution of her marriage in 1981. After their divorce, Philippe took the camera, leaving behind the projector and spools of film. “Those snippets of family life invisibly recorded within the history of those times. A fragment of a family autobiography.” And an exquisite tale it is.