Tableau Noir (Black Board)

Date/Time
Date(s) - 18/03/2015
6:30 pm - 8:00 pm

Location
M L Bhartia Auditorium, Alliance Francaise de Delhi

Categories


On the occasion of the
Week of the French Language, Literature and Culture

Alliance Française de Delhi and Embassy of Switzerland

invite you to

black-board

Wednesday, 18th March 2015, 6:30pm
M. L. Bhartia Auditorium, Alliance Française de Delhi
72, Lodi Estate, New Delhi – 110003

pensezbleu

SYNOPSIS

It’s a blackboard in all colours: a journey through one year of life in a close-knit mountain school. An ideal class, in which pupils aged 6 to 12 learn and play, succeed and fail, laugh and cry. A dramatic tale with universal appeal.

A SCHOOL ATOP A MOUNTAIN

The Derrière-Pertuis Inter municipal Primary School is located in a five-house hamlet on the edge of the Val-de-Ruz district of the Jura Mountains (Canton Neuchâtel), at an altitude of 1153 metres. The region is known to its inhabitants simply as “La Montagne” – “The Mountain”.

BLACKBOARD takes us into the microcosm of a multi-level classroom at work. Over the course of one school year, the film captures the atmosphere within the class, the climate of cooperation and exchange, and a setting that is both studious and playful. The filmmaker also accompanies the schoolchildren in their family lives, and places the school within the wider context of the social environment of “The Mountain”.

This voyage into the universe of the schoolchildren and their relationships conjures up the viewer’s own memories of childhood and school experiences. Our empathy grows as we become acquainted with the uniqueness of each child. We discover their moods, their concerns, and the ongoing adventures of the class in its full emotional scope.

The narrative takes an impressionistic and subjective approach. It is a chronicle that casts a sympathetic but not uncritical gaze on an everyday reality. The film lets its scenes speak for themselves, without commentary.

BLACKBOARD invites us to reflect on the question of primary school education, beyond the walls of this unique classroom.

 

ABOUT THE FILMMAKER

Yves Yersin was born in 1942 in Lausanne. From 1959-61 he studied at the École de photographie in Vevey. He specialised in advertising photography, and worked as a photo-reporter in Europe. In 1964 he trained as a cameraman with Rolf Seeger and worked as an apprentice scenographer at the Exposition Nationale in Lausanne. Since 1964, he has worked as a director, scenographer, editor, cameraman and independent producer. He has directed many films for cinema and television.

His feature film LES PETITES FUGUES was presented in the official selection at the Cannes Film Festival in 1980 and won the Grand Jury Prize at the Locarno Film Festival.It remains one of the most successful and beloved Swiss films of all time.

 

For more information, please write to [email protected] or call 011-43500217/218/222.