Marianne Dautrey

After a life as a journalist ( Mouvement magazine, Monde des Livres ), editor (Gallimard, éditions de l’INHA ), translator of German philosophy and literature (Walter Benjamin, Theodor W. Adorno), collaborator with numerous publishers, authors, artists alone or in groups (Marc Pataut, collectif le Perou et Siwa), Marianne Dautrey directed her first creative documentary in 2017-2018(Bazin Roman, co-directed with Hervé Joubert-Laurencin) and is about to complete her second (Fontaine. Thirty-three minutes at documenta fifteen co-directed with Hervé Joubert-Laurencin).

The director’s point of departure is the film “Claro”, made in Rome in 1975 by the Brazilian exile Glauber Rocha, with Juliet Berto, his partner at the time, and Carmelo Bene. The film touches on a number of still burning issues: exile, the South, political deadlock and speaking out, poetry, and the desperate search for light. In the almost fifty years since “Claro”, something of the democratic dialogue and “clarity” has still been lost in the Rome and Italy of 2023, which has brought far-right forces to power. Paradoxically, this is happening at a time when Brazil has decided to reconnect with its democratic forces. In 2023, a strange chiasmus is played out in relation to the Rome of 1975, through which the exiled Rocha travelled for Claro. Marianne d’Autrey sets out to examine this chiasmus, using the city of Rome, its sounds, its light and the words that circulate within it, as her actors.