“I am lucky to have a job that forces me to rediscover the child, the innocence”

Hippolyte Girardot is an actor, author, screenwriter and director. He made his debut as an actor alongside directors like Yannick Bellon with John’s Wife (1973), Francis Girod with Good pleasure (1984), Jean-Luc Godard with First name Carmen (1984) or Éric Rochant in A world without pity in 1989, still considered today to be the film of an entire generation and which offered him his first leading role.

He has just published A film disappears published by Seuil. He tells his story for the first time, introduces us to his family and the friends who accompany him.

franceinfo: You start your book with a chapter entitled The Ricochets and this question: What do we remember when we remember? This book shows you for the first time naked, raw, sometimes misty-eyed. What made you want to write this book?

Hippolyte Girardot: In fact, it was a suggestion from a young editor who, when I told her a little about how I became an actor, this little story that happens at the heart of the book which is the disappearance of this film, reminded me said: “There you go, that’s what you have to write about because that’s a story that we don’t know and it’s quite astonishing.“.

“To write this story, I was forced to contextualize and by going back through the different paths, I found myself with this memory, with my father who teaches me how to do ricochets and who at the same time talks about telling this story. that happens to us, that it is important to pass on our experience.”

Hippolyte Girardot

at franceinfo

Why this title A film disappears ? You led workshops with teenagers three times a week. With them, you created films in Super 8 and in particular one, which disappeared the day it was to be screened.

Nearly. I was at Arts Déco, finishing my studies. Suddenly, I began to discover cinema at Arts Déco. At the same time, I was offered this job as a cultural organizer in a Parisian suburb. The suburbs at the time, in 1977-78, it’s not at all like now so I don’t even know if it speaks to people who didn’t know it, but these were places where there were already populations who were pushed back there. I was sent there as a cultural facilitator. I was very happy to do that and had a lot of fun. I worked with schools, toddlers, etc. But above all, I met a group of young Kabyles who had known each other since childhood and who, in a way, adopted me. I was good with them, they were really brothers.

Farid, Ali…

Yes ! Farid who said to me one day: “We’re going to make a real movie“. And he had the idea of ​​using the arrival of the left in power. There was a state of mind which was still very new and he said: “We are going to tell with you Hippolyte, the chronicle of our lives because it is true that it is very adventurous“. And I, of course, very naively, went there and we made a feature film in Super 8. We obviously never had the money to make a copy. I did the editing and a Today, this film has disappeared.

You came to collect it and there, nothing!

The film was stolen, we never found out by whom. And from this black hole, this kind of atomic explosion which had destroyed an entire life course, that’s where, in fact, I began to become an actor. I had offers, I accepted everything, I went there even though I didn’t particularly intend to. So it still changed the direction in which I worked. The title, A film disappears, it’s because, for me too, there is something that has disappeared. I’m a bit part of this title. It’s a bit like “Hippo disappears”, somewhere. There’s something in the title that I find surprising myself when I read it.

Chesnay is the place where you grew up, the place where you began to invent your first stories. Was that when you wanted to tell or be part of the stories you were going to tell?

When I was a kid, I was what we call a dreamer, a bit in my own corner. And I think that the fact of wanting to tell a story or even the little comics that I made when I was little, etc… I think that it was a way of saying: there you go, maybe I’m not saying much- thing, but in fact I have things in my head. And little by little, this kind of confidence came.

“I think that this confidence in speaking, which I still have today, is very linked to my mother. She was someone who invented a world.”

Hippolyte Girardot

at franceinfo

My mother was someone who was extremely talkative, who told a lot of stories and who was also a big liar! It’s something that I really inherited from her and I think that when you’re an actor, that’s what you do.

You say : “You can spend your life looking for the child you once were and never get there“. What does it mean ?

This means that we are guided, even as adults, by the child we were because it is he who stored up all the deep emotions facing the world. It was he who felt pain and fear for the first time. Who laughed for the first time, who enjoyed for the first time, who discovered the world for the first time. And all those first times, that’s what builds up in you and that’s what you’re made up of and then you become an adult. But the adult is obliged to protect himself from other adults, from the world, etc.

There are things he forgets, he steels himself because he doesn’t want to cry for a yes or a no. He doesn’t want to laugh, even for a yes, for a no, it’s not true! It’s as if he’s cloistering the child within him a little. I did that too, but I’m lucky to have a job that forces me to seek out the child, the innocence, to find something where I’m fragile. This job helps me with that.

Find the interview here