2h30, directed by Jean-Pierre Carlon.
DVD Montparnasse Editions, supported by the CNC images of diversity.
“Paroles de Pieds-Noirs” is a 2.5 hour long version of the original 52 minute film “Il y a 40 ans déjà, l’histoire déchirée des Français d’Algérie” (40 years ago, the torn history of the French of Algeria), enriched by amateur archives and unpublished interviews.
Forty years later, perhaps the time has finally come to listen to the French of Algeria. In any case, this is the goal of this film, which highlights through testimonies a “memory journey” made of a necessity: to put down roots in a new country, a new society.
It is to the “intimate” pieds-noirs that I address myself. They speak to us about moments of everyday life, with the extraordinary way that this Mediterranean community has of verbalizing its emotions, its passions, its regrets as well as its angers, suddenly giving back a little of the meaning lost by History.
One can ask oneself if the appeasement of the French of Algeria does not pass precisely by the revision of the judgments which we carried on them and the recognition of a more equitable history which would not evade the fracture and the brutal turn which was going tragically all to mislead them.
It is also the story of two communities that were closely intertwined, that built a common work, that loved and hated each other, that tore each other apart in blood and that still today drag a dispute that no one will be able to settle for them.
DVD edition by Editions Montparnasse.