[arte] The Super 8 Years: the family memory of Annie Ernaux

Under the impetus of her film David, Annie Ernaux brings family films shot in the 1970s back to life, at the same time plunging us back into a social and political context that will bring back many memories for some.

There is something universal in these old Super 8 family films, something deeply nostalgic, which brings us back to our childhood, images in which we find objects, clothes, colors, attitudes, settings that knew him.
As much in the 70s and cameras were present in almost every home, Super8 cameras were reserved for passionate amateurs who did not imagine how much these tiny films would have such value 50 years later.

The Super 8 Years we rediscover the family films shot by the ex-husband ofAnnie Ernaux, Philippe Ernaux that the children have decided to take out the boxes to give them a second life. A documentary film made of fragments of life on which Annie Ernaux poses his voice, his text, precise, without affect.

We follow the writer’s family life between 1972 and the beginning of the 1980s. We see a couple and their two children settled in Annecy, taking advantage of each holiday to escape this region of mountains and forests in which they have to difficult to acclimatize, preferring the Ardèche, but also traveling abroad, to discover Chile fromAllendeMorocco, Spain, Portugal, or even Albania and Russia, lands of fantasies in the middle of the communist period.

There is obviously a lot of nostalgia in these images which have fixed moments of life, but also an era. We see a Annie Ernauxthirty-year-old and young author who has just published her first novel, Empty Cabinets. A pretty woman with brown hair, a mother, a college literature professor, who spends her lonely moments in writing.
A film which recalls in certain aspects, in particular for its side memories of the 70s, the very beautiful And I love to fury ofAndré Bonzel released in theaters last April.

“Et j’aime à la fureur”: André Bonzel, for the love of cinema… and girls!