Journal de France
de Raymond Depardon et Claudine Nougaret

If you did not get a chance to see Journal de France during the New Zealand International Film Festival 2012, now is your chance!

Part travel diary, part retrospective, Journal de France trails acclaimed documentarian Raymond Depardon on his six-year journey around the French countryside photographing the landscape with a large format plate camera.

Interspersed with images of a disappearing France are documentary clips and never-before-seen footage from Depardon’s incredible 40-year reporting career, in which he covered civil wars in combat zones around the world as well as political subjects closer to home. This long, solitary road trip provided fertile ground for the creation – with his long-time partner and collaborator Claudine Nougaret – of an extraordinary travel journal.

The journey returned Depardon to important places from his past as a reporter – Chad, Venice, Cannes – and to a wealth of previously unseen footage from his archive – an interview with Jean-Bedel Bokassa, films of famous figures from Jean-Luc Godard to Nelson Mandela, and extraordinary glimpses of private and public life.