Nicolas Klotz directed documentaries about musicians such as Ravi Shankar, Brad Mehldau or James Carter, and is the author of The Bengali Night and The Sacred Night. Between 1999 and 2006, he directed a “trilogy of modern times”: Paria in 2001, The Wound in 2005 and Heartbeat Detector, released in 2007. Now available on DVD, Paria and The Wound give us a great opportunity to look upon the art of a director, Nicolas Klotz, and a screenwriter, Elisabeth Perceval, whose way to think about their work is as rare as important.

Paria follows the path of two characters, Momo and Victor. Momo –remarkably played by Gérald Thomassin– lives in the streets, while Victor, on the edge of poverty, loses his apartment when he loses his job. Their destinies will come across during the night of the “millennium” which will be celebrated in a social pick-up bus. By a brilliant inversion of the points of view, the opening sequence, shot form the bus, in which the city night is threatening, takes a totally different aspect in the middle of the film. The events take another relief as the outcast have been given a face, taking back their humanity. In the wonderful sequence that follows, Blaise, one of the homeless is taken care of in a refuge where the outcast are healed and washed, far away in the suburbs, away from the good society. Victor and Momo, thanks to love, will find hope in a better future. Filmed in a documentary way, in DV under the cold urban lights, Paria catches the dark side of the city, the space between the spaces, the left-overs, and frees the speech of the outcast the society don’t know what to do with.

Parias too, the foreigners of The Wound are “welcome” in France by the border police, unwanted, considered guilty as they enter in France. Wounded before boarding to be expelled back to her country, Blandine finds a refuge with her husband in a squat where she meets with other people waiting to be transplanted to a country that already decided that they would be rejected. Though built on testimonies from months of inquiry, The Wound never considers its subjects theoretically. Like in Paria, Nicolas Klotz films in close shots, a hand, a movement, the texture of things. The direction is subtle, never ostentatious. By working on the length of the shots, mostly without moving his camera, Nicolas Klotz gives density to the lives of these outcast, filming the margin.

Nicolas Klotz’s two films are available at last on DVD with remarkable special features. The “Dialogues clandestins”, gathers testimonies and elements, which nourished the writing of the films, with participation of Portuguese director Pedro Costa and philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy. In “Ton doux visage” and “Ton sourire pas enfoui”, the director films his writer talking about the way she works and why she does it, with the desire to catch her moves, her body, her presence. Each DVD includes a booklet with further analysis and interviews and brings light on very interesting elements of these as rare as must-see films.

Francis Chérasse

More information about Paria
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