Ne croyez surtout pas que je hurle

75 min. French.

The flow of images is endless, snippets of hundreds of feature films follow each other in rapid succession. For the entire duration of this found-footage essay, they illustrate the filmmaker’s voiceover narration, which is akin to a diary covering the period between April and October 2016 and is equally delivered at speed. After separating from his partner, with whom he moved to a remote part of Alsace years before, the filmmaker lives there in isolation, without a car, without a job, without a future. He talks of this solitary existence, his depression and panic attacks, his obsession with watching vast numbers of films (at once a blessing and a curse), the loss of his father, a visit from filmmaker friends from Portugal, the terror attacks in Nice, the death of Prince, whether activism makes sense or no sense at all, film work in the first person singular, refugees in the Mediterranean and clearing out his flat before his planned move to Paris, which offers the light at the end of the tunnel. The furiously-paced montage of images and voiceover connects personal crisis and world events, thus becoming a document of a section of life and of a country in a state of emergency. (Birgit Kohler)

Frank Beauvais was born in Phalsbourg, France in 1970. He studied English at the Université de Strasbourg. From 1999 to 2002, he programmed the competition of the Belfort Entrevues Film Festival. Ne croyez surtout pas que je hurle is his first feature-length film.

State of emergency

January 2016. The love story that originally brought me to this village in Alsace, where I now live, ended six months ago. At the age 45, I find myself alone, without a car, a job or any real prospects. The luxuriant nature which surrounds me cannot help me out of my deep despair. After the terrorist attacks of November 2015, France is still in a state of emergency.
I feel helpless, suffocated by my suppressed rage. I am lost and I watch four to five films a day.
I decide to record this stagnation, not by picking up a camera but by editing together shots from the films I watch. (Frank Beauvais)

A need for screaming and theorising

As a viewer, I am touched by the poetry of shots that, once isolated, no longer betray their origin: shots of clocks, windows, keys, screens, furniture, traffic signs, cogs, keyboards, vegetation, landscapes, but also close-ups of faces, of extras who have been edited into the film, isolated from the context, and who are never seen again.
Through a mashup, I tried to bring together these types of mute shots in order to emphasise their heterogeneity, alternating between black-and-white and colour and respecting their original format, thus creating a dialogue with the memory of the dark days I lived through in 2016. My aim was to generate a reflexive dynamic for the audience by constantly playing with the discrepancy and the correspondence between what they see and what they hear.
One could say that this is merely a cinematic treatise on a method, an attempt at establishing a set of rules, a wish to theorise a profound need. The idea, however, was first and foremost to recreate a scream, to express rage over the collusion between the chronicle of my despair and these images, which derive from another time and place but nevertheless comment more eloquently on my daily life than my own images could have done. These images and words express my inner turmoil, my helplessness, my ruin. They express my fear of police violence, of the social, economic, ideological and human violence that is spreading through France and the world at large. I felt I had to let out this scream so that I would not suffocate. (Frank Beauvais)

Production Justin Taurand, Michel Klein, Matthieu Deniau, Philippe Grivel. Production companies Les Films du Bélier (Paris, France), Les Films Hatari (Strasbourg, France), Studio Orlando (Paris, France). Written and directed by Frank Beauvais. Editing Thomas Marchand. Sound design Matthieu Deniau. Sound Philippe Grivel.

Premiere February 09, 2019, Forum

Films

2005: A genoux / On My Knees (21 min.), Le soleil et la mort voyagent ensemble / Sun and Death Travel Together (12 min.). 2006: Vosges (Trilogie d’Arno – première partie) / Vosges (Arno’s Trilogy / Part 1) (6 min.). 2007: Compilation 12 Instants d’amour non partagé (Trilogie d’Arno – deuxième partie) / Compilation, 12 Moments of Unshared Love (Arno’s Trilogy / Part 2) (42 min.). 2008: Je flotterai sans envie (Trilogie d’Arno – troisième partie) / I’ll be Floating Without Any Desire (Arno’s Trilogy / part 3) (46 min.). 2009: La guitare de diamants / A Diamond Guitar (35 min.), Un 45 tours de cheveu (ceci n’est pas un disque) (6 min.). 2015: Un éléphant me regarde / There's an Elephant Staring at Me (30 min.). 2019: Ne croyez surtout pas que je hurle / Just Don't Think I'll Scream.