Maison du Geste et de l'Image

In 1998 a regular exchange of video letters was launched between a group of pupils in their fourth year at the Collège Georges Rouault in the 19th arrondissement in Paris. At the outset the video letters had been seen as an exclusively preventive experience. It was a much more important and fundamental experience : the discovery of the refreshing power of words. Words that had time to be constructed without being felt, both in school and in prison, as a trap (which is often the case). Little by little, the pupils and the prisoners took care of the recording of their video letters themselves. Following the example of the words, the images are raw, seeking themselves. But they are also borne by a rare tension, sensitivity, fragility. These are the images and the sounds which, two years later, we decided to organise into a film. To show an experience which also has to be closed by giving the protagonists a chance to speak one more time.