Les révolutionnaires du Tchad + With Tibesti Too

This program collects two mid-length documentaries by Raymond Depardon from the mid-1970s, inaugurating a career-spanning interest in former French colonial Africa. Taken together, the two films yield a fascinating, complex look at Chad in the 1970s, from the perspective of its native tribespeople and European journalists/aid workers/archaeologists alike.

With Tibesti Too
Raymond Depardon, 1976, France, 36m
French with English subtitles
A relatively early cinematic work of Depardon’s, this medium-length film—shot on black-and-white 35mm—documents the Toubou tribe in latter-day Chad, crafting a striking and unsentimental record of their everyday lives, which parallel those of farmers from Depardon’s native Villefranche-sur-Saône.

Followed by:
Les révolutionnaires du Tchad
Raymond Depardon, 1976, France, 54m
French with English subtitles
From the outset of his filmmaking career, Depardon’s approach to documentary was already marked by formal adventurousness and a powerful feeling of immediacy: here, he follows a group of journalists who find themselves caught in an ambush in Chad; the film then changes gears, consisting of interviews with Françoise Claustre, an archaeologist held hostage by the Chadian rebels whose experience was the basis for Depardon’s later fiction film, Captive of the Desert.