Marie-Françoise Plissart
Reality, Minus Something

A film by Anne François | 1988

Belgium
fr
11'

Marie-Françoise Plissart ｜Reality, Minus Something

Trailer

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Synopsis

First appearing in post-war Italy, the photo-novel quickly became an international phenomenon of popular culture. But for a long time it was shunned by the artistic and intellectual worlds. In the 1980s, the Belgian photographer Marie-Françoise Plissart and the Franco-Belgian scriptwriter Benoît Peeters helped to reinvent the genre with the éditions de Minuit. In this short documentary, director Anne François accompanies Marie-Françoise Plissart at close quarters with her artistic process, as she imagines a new photo novel. There's something very playful about her experimental approach. The photographer plays with her shots: cutting, cropping, enlarging, retouching and collage are the essential stages in the emergence of her black and white worlds in which the story must be told through the image alone, without any text. Her playground? Marie-Françoise Plissart likes to use abandoned places, ‘dream machines’ as she calls them.

What you will find in this film

The creation of a photo-novel • telling a story through images • the magic of abandoned places • the printing process • editing: a craft work • black and white to reveal the essence of a scene or a person

Keywords

Portrait & Aesthetics Analogue Photography Experimental & Alternative Photography The Artist at Work

When I do photo-novels, the idea is always to make the most of everything I'm given by chance: the light, the location, the people and the scenario.

Marie-Françoise Plissart Photographer

In colour, things are a bit scattered, they're in their raw state and not sufficiently transformed. That doesn't interest me because I like to twist reality, to push it to its essence. It seems to me that black and white gets to the heart of the matter. Black and white accentuates the soul of the face.

Marie-Françoise Plissart Photographer

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The authors/artists

Marie-Françoise Plissart

Further exploration

Frédérique Deschamps ; ROMAN-PHOTO ; Textuel ; 2017
Marie-Françoise Plissart et Benoît Peeters ; FUGUES ; Les Éditions de Minuit ; 1983

Mamiya 645

Meeting with Marie-Françoise Plissart to discuss her career as a photographer and film-maker (in French)

Dialogue between Benoît Peeters and Marie-Françoise Plissart at an event devoted to the image, on the theme of immobile journeys, organised by the Centre Pompidou (in French)