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La couleur des mots (1984)
Character: Self
This afterword to India Song (Duras' celebrated 1975 film) is organized in several parts. It begins with an interview to Marguerite Duras by Dominique Noguez, an expert in her work; the interview links the film to the two movies whom it's related to: The Ravishment of Lol V. Stein and The Vice-Consul.
Several themes are tackled: childhood, autobiographical traces, relationships between differents characters and different films and more. India Song's main actors — Delphine Seyrig and Michael Lonsdale, who played Anne-Marie Stretter and the French vice-consul — join the conversation and talk about their roles and their craft. Marguerite Duras then evokes her memories of the shooting with the composer Carlos D'Alessio and her camera operato Bruno Nuytten.
The conversations are punctuated by clips of the film.
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Marguerite Duras: Worn Out with Desire . . . to Write (1985)
Character: Self
She was the sort of woman who spared neither herself nor others—and arguably qualifies as 20th-century France’s greatest femme de lettres. In this interview, the late novelist and filmmaker talks openly about the hardship and the romance of her childhood in French Indochina, sharing how this period haunted her life and shaped her work. Excerpts from her films and readings from her books by actress Elizabeth Rider and Duras herself—including The Lover, winner of the Prix Goncourt and translated into more than forty languages—bring to life those formative years in Vietnam.
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Écrire (1994)
Character: Self
When Duras saw 'La mort du jeune aviateur anglais', she told Benoît Jacquot that the film was about him, not her. "She treated me like a thief. So I offered to make another film, where she could say whatever she wanted about her life as a writer. That’s how we did Écrire. I brought the same film crew. We went to her house at Neauphle-le-Château and we set up in the room she called 'the music room,' where there was a piano and you could listen to records. She settled in and for two days of non-stop filming, she talked."
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Marguerite, telle qu’en elle-même (2003)
Character: Self (archive footage)
On June 3, 1991, Marguerite Duras gave me her last published work, "The North China Lover", autographed for the first time. She wrote: "For my friend Dominique Auvray, in memory of a wonder of wonders: a still recent past, when we worked together in the cinema". This is a portrait of her as she was cheerful and serious, authentic and provocative, considerate and categorical, but first and foremost young and free.
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Gaumont-Palace (1976)
Character: Narrator (voice)
From the deserted halls and corridors of the Gaumont-Palace cinema in Paris, memories of the great films that inhabited it before its demolition emerge like ghosts. The voice of Marguerite Duras, who reads texts from “Nathalie Granger” and “Woman of the Ganges”, adds a touch of nostalgia to this complex essay.
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Hiroshima : le temps d'un retour (2005)
Character: (voice)
Luc Lagier puts Alain Resnais' film back in its historical context and in the filmmaker's biography. He tells the story, then the development of what was originally intended to be a short documentary film and which turned into an unusual allegory. Composed of fascinating archives, including notably the correspondence between Duras and Resnais, this analysis of 'Hiroshima mon amour' manages to put the film in perspective while detaching itself from it. A rare and captivating work.
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Pop Age (1966)
Character: Self
Report on the young people of the yéyé period and pop music. Jerk at the Palladium, Beatles, press clippings, questions about the impact of fashion (long hair and accoutrements) and modernity, youth, change, freedom.
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Lolo Pigalle Strip-teaseuse (1965)
Character: Self
In this episode of Dim Dam Dom, Duras interviews the stripper Lolo Pigalle. A clip of Lolo dancing in a golden dress is followed by an intense and intimate conversation in which Lolo discusses the definition of work, the splitting of the self, and acting vs. sex work.
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Jeanne Moreau par Marguerite Duras (1965)
Character: Self
Duras interviews an exhausted Jeanne Moreau, addressing her friend as vous, despite the fact "the two were close friends for many years, living in neighbouring houses and cooking for each other from the early ‘60s.
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Marguerite Duras chez les fauves (1966)
Character: Self
Duras, ever the challenging interviewer, forensically questions a Parisian zookeeper regarding the happiness of the animals in his charge. Intercut with her questions is stark black-and-white footage of the animals themselves behind bars, as they pace the length of their small concrete enclosures. Duras is very much on the side of the big cats. “Are you ever careless?” she asks the zookeeper. When he replies in the negative, Duras says smilingly: “In your position I’d be tempted to be careless”.
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Marguerite Duras à la petite Roquette (1967)
Character: Self
During this strange and confrontational interview, Duras takes on France’s only female prison warden. In the women’s verbal wrangling we find reflected many contemporary concerns surrounding the ongoing moral disaster of the prison industrial complex.
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Les lycéens ont la parole (1968)
Character: Self
Here Duras assumes a more distant role, less an interviewer than an invested documentarian. Her questions precede footage of her main subject, the sixteen-year-old Romain Goupil, recently excluded from the lycée, among his peers and fellow student revolutonaries. After we see them discuss the complexities of their position and deal with internal dissent, Duras asks Romain if he ever forgets how young he is. Romain replies with a grin: “Totally.”
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La caverne noire (1984)
Character: Self
In this interview with Dominique Noguez, Marguerite Duras talks successively about each of her four short films made in 1979: Césarée, Les Mains négatives, Aurélia Steiner (Melbourne), Aurélia Steiner (Vancouver). She touches briefly on the various subjects dealt with: the return to Césarée of Berenice, repudiated for reasons of state, Jewish wandering, the scandal of the camps in the two Aurelia Steiner. Negative Hands as the colonial data of humanity, a film offered to the blacks and Portuguese who clean up Paris before leaving the place. Marguerite Duras also comments, with excerpts, on the various traveling shots that make up the main plot of each of the short films. And the documentary ends with a few words of epilogue: a real pamphlet by Marguerite Duras against dreams, significantly entitled Work and Words.
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Marguerite Duras (1994)
Character: Self
Marguerite Duras.is interviewed twice, first in 1984 and then in 1993, on her life and work as a writer and filmmaker.
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Duras et le cinéma (2014)
Character: self (archive footage)
Documentary on famous writer Marguerite Duras and her paradoxical relation to the seventh art by her former film editor.
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Les enfants et Noël (1965)
Character: Self - Narrator (voice)
Reflections (in voice-over) by Marguerite DURAS on toys "the most beautiful are those you see behind the window", children's relationship with toys, the "laughter of joy". Shots of dazzled children in front of toys in a window, two children in a shop admiring mechanical toys, different expressions of these children and other children in front of a few toys.
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Mulher a Mulher: Marguerite Duras em Lisboa responde a Jann Lemée (1980)
Character: Self
‘Mulher a Mulher’ is a Portuguese TV show dedicated to the condition of women that aims to demystify gender prejudice. Its last programme looks at the literary and cinematographic work of Marguerite Duras (writer, playwright and film director) with an interview conducted by writer Yann Lemée and provided by the Centro Nacional de Cultura, in Lisbon.
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Cygne I (1976)
Character: Narrator (voice)
Stages a double persona on a music of Monteverdi (Ariadne’s lamento interpreted by Janet Baker).
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Little Girl Blue (2023)
Character: Self (archive footage)
In 2016, French writer and photographer Carole Achache took her own life. After Carole's death, her daughter Mona Achache, a film director, discovers thousands of photos, letters and recordings that Carole left behind, but these buried secrets make her disappearance even more of an enigma. Through the power of filmmaking and the beauty of incarnation with the help of actress Marion Cotillard, the director brings her mother back to life to retrace her journey and find out who she really was.
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Césarée (1978)
Character: Self - Narrator (voice)
On images of the Tuileries Gardens, Marguerite Duras recalls Césarée, an ancient destroyed city.
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Mitterrand, président culturel (2021)
Character: Self (archive footage)
On the occasion of the fourty years anniversary of François Mitterand's election, a look back to the relationship between the President and artists, from admiration to manipulation.
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Les lieux de Marguerite Duras (1976)
Character: Self
Her whole childhood, Marguerite Duras spent her time moving. Her house in Neauphle-le-Château is the one she has lived in the most, and the one she says: “All the women in my books have lived in this house. All ... ” Duras tells about her house and her garden closely linked to his work, remembers the forest of her childhood and evokes her fear of music.
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Marguerite Duras, l'écriture et la vie (2021)
Character: Self
25 years ago, Marguerite Duras passed away at the age of 81. At the evocation of this name, one spontaneously thinks of the intellectual superstar Duras, adulated or hated, with her big glasses and turtleneck, who received the Goncourt prize for her mythical novel, "L'Amant". But behind the superstar writer, who either fascinates or annoys, and behind his double novel, the young Indochinese girl, with her hair pulled back and lips underlined with lipstick, which is precisely the subject of "L'Amant", are hidden other, perhaps less well-known facets of the character, a writer, but also a filmmaker, journalist, a woman committed to the left, a transient lover or a loving mother. Marguerite Duras will have had 1000 lives in one and many other faces. This film attempts to get as close as possible to this extraordinary destiny.
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Le Navire Night (1979)
Character: (voice)
Le Navire Night is a story of love and desire sustained and nourished through sound waves. The film’s voice-over tells the story of a woman, terminally ill with leukemia, living in isolation at her wealthy father's villa, and a man working night shifts at a telephone company. They have never met in person.
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Les Mains négatives (1978)
Character: Self - Narrator (voice)
Traces a slow advance through Paris in the early hours of the morning. The deserted boulevards of Paris are punctuated by interspersed groups of dark-skinned workers, stray prostitutes and vagabonds.
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Les vendredis d'Apostrophes (2015)
Character: Self (archive footage)
Hours and historical meetings, Pierre Assouline has composed an anthology of the best extracts presented in the form of a primer, which he had commented on by a surprised Bernard Pivot.
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India Song (1975)
Character: Voix Intemporelle (voice)
Anne-Marie Stretter, the wife of a French diplomat in 1930s India, takes many lovers to relieve the boredom in her life.
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Duras/Godard (1987)
Character: Self
On December 2, 1987, the filmmaker visited the novelist at her home in Paris. This meeting gave rise to this hour-long documentary in which JLG and Marguerite Duras attempt to establish a dialogue about artistic creation.
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Delphine et Carole, insoumuses (2020)
Character: Self (archive footage)
In the 70s, actress Delphine Seyrig and director Carole Roussopoulos, both militant feminists, were the pioneers of video activism in France. They documented the demonstrations of French feminists and used the new technologies to counter the poor representation of women in the public media.
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Dim Dam Dom: Marguerite Duras et le petit François (1965)
Character: Self
Broadcast once a month, Dim Dam Dom was a TV variety show on the second channel of French public television agency ORTF made up of a series of short sequences presented by one–off guest presenters. On the 30th of April 1965, Marguerite Duras interviewed François, a little seven-year old boy. Duras asked him what he thought about the inventions of the future, school, the usefulness of TV, "Belphégor" and talking horses. Francois answered the writer’s cunning questions with humour, candour and poetry.
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Godard, seul le cinéma (2023)
Character: N/A
Jean-Luc Godard is synonymous with cinema. With the release of Breathless in 1960, he established himself overnight as a cinematic rebel and symbol for the era's progressive and anti-war youth. Sixty-two years and 140 films later, Godard is among the most renowned artists of all time, taught in every film school yet still shrouded in mystery. One of the founders of the French New Wave, political agitator, revolutionary misanthrope, film theorist and critic, the list of his descriptors goes on and on. Godard Cinema offers an opportunity for film lovers to look back at his career and the subjects and themes that obsessed him, while paying tribute to the ineffable essence of the most revered French director of all time.
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La Femme du Gange (1974)
Character: Voice
A man returns to the place he once lived a passionate love affair with a woman who is now dead. So powerful are the emotions that seize him that he imagines she is still alive, and begins to live as if this were the case...
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Nathalie Granger (1973)
Character: (voice)
With little or no embellishment, filmmaker Marguerite Duras offers a simple, often wordless chronicle of a woman's day. She and her friend are seen doing yard work, talking about their families and receiving the occasional visitor. The brightest spot in the day is when a washing machine salesman comes to call.
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La TV des 70's : Quand Giscard était président (2022)
Character: Self (archive footage)
In May 1974, Valéry Giscard d'Estaing became President of the Republic and wanted to bring about a new era of modernity. One of his first decisions was to break up the ORTF with the creation of three new television channels: TF1, Antenne 2 and FR3. Three new public channels but autonomous and competing. It is a race for the audience which is engaged then, and from now on the channels will make the war! This competition will give birth to a real golden age for television programs, with variety shows in the forefront. The stars of the song are going to invade the living rooms of the French for their biggest pleasure. This unedited documentary tells the story of the metamorphosis of this television of the early 1970s, between freedom of tone, scandals, political intrigues and programs that have become mythical.
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Le Camion (1977)
Character: elle
In this most talky and personal of films, director Marguerite Duras and actor Gerard Depardieu do an on-camera read-through of a movie script. Occasionally, the director comments about the characters or their motivations, and sometimes the actor does. That's all -- there is no action, there are no location shots, no one pretends to be anything else. The script itself tells about an encounter between a blank-slate of a woman hitchhiker, and a communist truck driver. As the reading progresses, Duras comments bitterly about the failed ideals of communism and the glorious revolution that will probably never happen.
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Son nom de Venise dans Calcutta désert (1976)
Character: N/A
The full soundtrack to Marguerite Duras' 1975 film India Song, about a French ambassador's wife in 1930s India, is here repurposed with all new cinematography. As we hear all the dialogue of a bygone movie, we travel visually through images of absence and decay, bereft of life. It's the ghost of a film, and a further commentary on colonialism.
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Baxter, Vera Baxter (1977)
Character: Narrator (voice) (uncredited)
In an empty villa, Vera Baxter sits and contemplates her life, as she recounts to a woman who was drawn to the villa when she heard the name Vera Baxter pronounced. Vera tells her about her no-good husband, who has been using her to keep his failing business afloat, up to her present love affair.
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Un metteur en ordre: Robert Bresson (1966)
Character: Self
A documentary, originally produced in 1966 for the French TV series "Pour le plaisir," about Robert Bresson's film "Au Hasard Balthazar," featuring interviews and discussions with Bresson, Jean-Luc Godard, Louis Malle, Marguerite Duras and others.
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L'affaire Matzneff (2020)
Character: Self (archive footage)
About the Gabriel Matzneff affair and pedophilia in French culture and society from the 1950s to the present day. "It was not very difficult to know who Matzneff was at the time." Vanessa Springora denounces thus, in an interview with the Parisian , the support which benefited the writer Gabriel Matzneff , in the years 1970 and 1980. The author fifties then maintains an affair with the young girl, aged 14 years. A relationship under control that the editor tells in Le Consentement (éd. Grasset), published Thursday. "After having analyzed the work " , the Paris public prosecutor's office announced Friday January 3 the opening of an investigation for "rapes committed on the person of a minor of 15 years".
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L’homme atlantique (1981)
Character: Narrator (voice)
A woman watches and speaks to a man as he moves through a house by the sea. She observes his presence and tracks his shifting distance from her.
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Jeanne Moreau, l'affranchie (2018)
Character: Self - Writer (archive footage)
An account of the life of actress Jeanne Moreau (1928-2017), a true icon of the New Wave and one of the most idolized French movie stars.
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Pornotropic : Marguerite Duras et l'illusion coloniale (2020)
Character: Self - Writer (archive footage)
When French writer Marguerite Duras (1914-96) published her novel The Sea Wall in 1950, she came very close to winning the prestigious Prix Goncourt. Meanwhile, in Indochina, France was suffering its first military defeats in its war against the Việt Minh, the rebel movement for independence.
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Aurélia Steiner (Vancouver) (1979)
Character: Narrator (voice)
Based on the letters of a fictitious poetess to her lover. Duras reads extracts from the letters, about the poetess’s Jewish past, while the film shows stark waves beating against the seashore. – BFI
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Une minute pour une image (1983)
Character: Self - Narrator
TV series directed by Varda in which she gives thoughts to her favorite images and why she is drawn to them (in short one minute segments per image)
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