Bui Camille
As a researcher and a film critic, my theoretical work focuses on documentary. I’m also a photographer and, since a long time, I have been wanting to start making films. For me, the Artists@work workshop is a great opportunity to delve into practice, while taking part in a collective dynamics.
I work on Lola’s film project, a portrait of Nicole, a woman who dedicates her life to rescuing abandoned dogs. With Alerte SOS, her association, based in her own living room, and in relation with refuges in Spain, Russia and Guadeloupe, she organizes the arrival of the dogs in Paris and finds families to adopt them. The project is thus mainly about commitment to a cause, and human / animal relations.
Before the project started, Lola had already developed a relationship with Nicole and her work, adopting a dog, spending time at the association and taking photographs. We then started to introduce the camera and the micro inside different situations with our character : in the office, in the moment of the « rescue » at Orly airport, and during the daily promenade of Nicole with her two old dogs. As we got closer to her and realized that she felt comfortable with being filmed, it became clear that the film would be a portrait of Nicole, throughout one rescuing process, rather than just an immersion into the life of the association. We need to continue developing our relation with her, and define more concretely our directing principles, to be able to start shooting the actual film at the end of march / april.
The title is a metaphor of what her association of animal protection seems to represent for our character : a place hidden from the agitation of the world, from where to fight without interruption against unfairness.