Lunch with Poussière [Dust]
Interview with Clémentine Carrié, director of Poussière [Dust]
Can you explain your choice of title?
This short film tells the story of a breakup, and more specifically the story of mourning for a romantic relationship. The title Dust evokes both the act itself of tearing up – the fact of “biting the dust” and “turning to dust” – and what is left afterwards – the emptiness and the only traces (ashes) of an inanimate word.
Tell us about the sketches.
The sketches are taken from the personal notebooks/diaries I work on everyday. They’re drawn bodies – exclusively bodies – that plunge the texts and photos into a sort of introspection, a reconnection with disconcerting and highly subjective feelings about love and breakups.
Why did you choose the whispering?
The film is like a letter or an admission that slips out as a farewell. So it’s very intuitive that for the intimacy to reveal itself shamelessly and achieve it without violence, it was necessary to have a level of concentration and hearing that whispering engenders.
Your short is described as “documentary”. How would you classify it?
I think Poussière is described as “experimental fiction”. But the question is appropriate. I waited a long time before ascribing a genre or description to it. Because the project is on the border among different arts. So although it draws from and is situated squarely in the real, the project is also narrative. My method was to dissect my daily life in order to give it a form, fictionalize it, make it understood and give it to others. In that sense, for me, it’s fiction.
What are your future film plans? Would you like to explore other styles and genres within animation?
I’m writing two upcoming films: a short that tells how a couple one short weekend comes up against the ghosts of their pasts; and a feature film set on a magnetic island that pits the island community against the force of nature. In these two projects I want to explore and have fun with other styles, images (and yes specifically in animation) and sounds. It’s an incredible way of putting things side by side and in contact with or against which lets you create a much more complex meaning and / or sensation.
Have you discovered any advantages that the short film form offers?
Above all, short films have allowed me to let go: the breadth of the cinematic spectrum and experimentation are incredible. So I was able to create while avoiding the external pressures of results and/or form. That’s such a benefit!
Poussière [Dust] is part of National Competition F2.
