at the Annecy Festival, Jean-François Laguionie discusses his beginnings as a filmmaker and his latest story

Jean-François Laguionie is a regular at the Annecy Animated Film Festival. 59 years after winning the Grand Prix for his short film “The Lady and the Cellist”, he presents “Slocum et moi”, his seventh feature film, in official competition. Encounter.

Annecy, June 12. “You know, I am no longer used to this kind of conversation, during the eight years of work on my film, I have not given an interview, I am in territory of non-knowledge!” In the café of a hotel a few steps from the lake, Jean-François Laguionie warns, but takes pleasure in the exercise.

Aged 84, winner of numerous awards including the Palme d’Or for short films for Rowing across the Atlantic (1978), the director is one of the major figures of French animated cinema. This year he presents Slocum and me in official competition at the Annecy Festival, a tender film about childhood and family. An ode to travel too, to immobile crossings.

Franceinfo Culture: In “Slocum et moi” you talk about a few years of your childhood marked by a project of your father. Why did you want to tell this memory?
Jean-François Laguionie: It’s quite mysterious. I have directed a lot of films and I realized that for 60 years, I always either had a film in mind or in the making. I wondered where this imagination and these ideas which, for many, are linked to the sea came from. From time to time, I thought of my childhood, of holidays by the water. But these stays did not seem to me to be a sufficient answer. I remembered a period in my childhood when my father had embarked on a very strange production since we lived in the Paris suburbs and had a very small garden. As surprising as it may seem, he started building a boat, a replica of the famous Joshua Slocum’s sailboat. Recounting this memory was for me a way of paying tribute to my parents, but also of illuminating a part of my childhood. I was an only child, very happy, free, but very lonely.

You talk about imagination and memories, what place do you leave for fiction in “Slocum and me”?
None ! The film tells exactly what I experienced between the ages of 11 and 16. Down to the smallest details. It amused me to try to reconstruct things exactly as they happened, as if I were making, with a rigorous chronology, a little documentary of my life.

Regarding the documentary aspect, you reconstruct the 1950s with great fidelity. There is the musette ball music, the Manufrance catalog…
The Manufrance catalog appears in all my films. At that time, it was the most important book in the house. My parents were broke, American household appliances had arrived with the Liberation… The catalog was a book full of dreams.

In “Slocum and I”, your father is very surprised by your level of drawing. This documentary about your childhood also tells the genesis of your career?
In a way, yes. The drawing is linked to this solitary childhood which constitutes something central in the film. I had few friends, we didn’t live in a suburb with large communities where I could have found a gang. The suburban house is a family island, an island surrounded by walls. So very young, to pass the time, I started drawing. But at the time my father embarked on this project, I started drawing boats to imitate his plans, I admired him a lot. And finally, I still draw some.

Young filmmakers are doing fantastic things, with extraordinary techniques.

Did the drawings allow you to include yourself in the project?

It was a way of understanding the project because my father, naturally, had not warned me. He didn’t warn anyone. It was a time when we didn’t talk to children. I remember that there were always little injunctions, like not talking at the table, not asking questions. It’s insane. Today, on the contrary, normal education takes place through dialogue with children, particularly at the table since that is the time when everyone is together.

François, the character who represents you in the film, goes to applied arts school. Is that where you discovered animation?
At school, I met Jacques Colombat, who also became a director. He was completely fascinated by the work of Paul Grimault, whom he had met at a conference and whom he had managed to convince to let him make a paper cut film in his workshops. I wrote stories, I wanted to create theater sets, and he in turn took me to Grimault. There, I made three films. It was a bit of a coincidence and at the same time, when you draw, you love stories and you are fascinated by cinema, animation is a bit of an ideal combination. It is a means of expression of infinite richness.

You made these first films with cut paper. A little over sixty years later, what has changed in your creative process?
Not much ! When I showed Slocum and me to my friends, they told me that it looked like a first film! I haven’t really kept up with technological developments. For my previous film, Louise in winter, I had made all the decorations on paper. For Slocum and I, I made around ten gouaches to define the character. I am also making a drawn model of the film. I call it “wild animatic”. It’s a job that I’m doing with Anik Le Ray, who is the screenwriter of Slocum and me and many other films. It takes us a year or two. We make the wind, the sound of seagulls, temporary classical music. Before the film, everything is very artisanal.

Despite a significant amount of craftsmanship, “Slocum and I” is still produced in 3D animation.
It’s true, but I don’t know anything about it! This is actually a problem from which I detach myself quite cowardly. The 3D is provided by my great team of animators and decorators. I’m lucky to have worked with Denis Lambert, an excellent assistant director, who takes care of what I don’t know how to do. I can only thank him.

Are you impressed by this technological development?
Yes, young filmmakers are doing fantastic things, with extraordinary techniques. But I don’t necessarily watch them. For the last eight years, my head was in my film.

The other major development in animated cinema is its growing place in the film industry. Do you feel that the reception is different than when you started?
Feature films when I was young, there were one or two per year. The Annecy Festival only presented short films and was only held every two years. I think the wave of Japanese cinema has done us a lot of good, it allowed us to move away from the Disney era, especially Disney for children. Animation was more associated with youth, that’s something that saddened me. I had no idea what a children’s film was. For me it was a means of artistic expression and my stories were adult stories.

59 years after winning the Grand Prix at the Annecy Festival, your film is selected in the official competition. Is this important to you?
No because I didn’t want to compete. I don’t like it, I never liked the competition during festivals. But on the other hand, at the premiere, I was very moved. There were a lot of young people in the audience and at the end of the session I could feel their emotion. I didn’t think that young people, who are growing up with new techniques, would be touched by this film which is so artisanal. It was a beautiful moment.