Edgar Morin, chronique d'un regard

A brilliant piece of work about Edgar Morin, a french sociologist, how his life was impacted by cinema. There is no need to know of Edgar Morin before you see the film; he first appears as any of us : part of the audience. The love of cinema, how a film, a story can change one's life. We follow the path of his thoughts, his memories, the events in his life that led him to write his books on cinema. As well as being an interesting lesson on cinema, "Edgar Morin, chronicle of a gaze" is also the portrait of a man with a passion. His voice floats throughout the film, words are ideas that turn into images projected on the walls of Paris' buildings - an impressive sight. The film takes us on a journey through time, the past comes alive on screen ; photographs of a ruined Berlin after the war brought back to our senses by Morin's voice as he tells us about a violinist he heard playing in the ruins. We gladly let ourselves be carried away by the stream of thoughts of Edgar Morin, the stories of films as he remembers them, personal history, his ideas and philosophy, but never to be lost in them, and that is where the film is well made, well crafted by its directors. I recommend it simply to all curious about cinema.

It's a journey through Edgar Morin, a french philosopher and sociologist, life and his own experience of cinema. Edgar Morin speaks about the essential part cinema had in his intellectual fulfillment, from his childhood and the discovering of social and political French, German or Sovietic movies, to the writing of his famous essays « The Cinema or The Imaginary man » and « The Stars » in the 50's, and the directing of Chronicle of a summer in 1960 with Jean Rouch. Morin brings here a new vision about the Seventh art, and both his words and the images makes us escape the boundaries of the screen. The old movies images projected against buildings in Paris and Berlin are astonished. It's a simple but emotionally captivating movie.