Raymond Depardon’s marvelous documentaries (Caught in the Act, Profiles Farmer, 10th District Court) have long been PFA favorites. In Les années déclic (The Declic Years, a pun on the sound of a camera shutter), Depardon presents himself—photographs taken over twenty years; excerpts from his films; and, behind it all, his image—for consideration, creating a powerful, lonely, and gripping autobiographical tour. Depardon’s examination of issues and questions in photography and journalism permeates his work, prompting Cahiers du cinéma’s Louis Marcorelles to write of Depardon’s “auteur complex. The camera is his alter ego, a mirror along the road as Stendhal said of the novel, and a mirror in the Cocteau tradition, Narcissus’s perfect tool.”

• (65 mins, In French with English subtitles, B&W, 35mm, From French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, permission Palmeraie et Désert)

Preceded by:
The Dream
Mohammad Malas (Syria, 1981)

(al-Manam). A touching documentary shot in Sabra and Shatila, Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon. Malas, a key figure in the Syrian New Wave, interviews the children, women, old people, and militants of the camps, asking them about their dreams. Many participants in the film would be killed just a few months later, in the infamous massacre at the camps led by the Lebanese Phalangist forces.

• (45 mins, In Arabic with English subtitles, Color, Digital video, From ArteEast)

• (Total running time: 110 mins)