“We need to dream, we don’t die from an overdose of dreams,” the wonderful director Claude Lelouch

2024-07-26 04:19:55

The filmmaker filmed the Winter Olympics in Grenoble in 1968. The opening ceremony in Paris took place on Friday, and the actor expressed his impatience before the “universal love campaign”.

Published on 07/25/2024 8:25 pm

Updated 26/07/2024 06:19

Reading time: 4 min

Film Claude Lelouch during the Cannes Film Festival, May 24, 2022 (PIERRE TEYSSOT / MAXPPP)

“We need to dream.the wonderful director Claude Lelouch, on the eve of the opening ceremony of the Paris Olympic Games 2024, scheduled for Friday July 26. Film producer, who directed with François Reichenbach Thirteen Days in France on the Winter Olympics in Grenoble in 1968, wanted to film “a time of great joy”. On Friday, during the opening ceremony, he hopes to see spectators as well “wonderful face” and he called them “seize the day”. “Games are a declaration of love to the whole world”Claude Lelouch’s enthusiasm.

Franceinfo: How did you experience the unique experience of filming the Olympic Games in France?

Claude Lelouch: Games are a declaration of love to the whole world. Men and women come from everywhere. And then, for thirteen days at a time in Grenoble, we do sports, parties, love and music. Everything mixed. There is what happens during the day on earth. And then there is what happened at night. There are parties, all the stars are there. It was such a big, amazing, amazing carnival that I had the opportunity to film with Thirteen days in France, which stars among others Jean-Claude Killy, Marielle Goitschel, but especially General de Gaulle. I was lucky to be able to experience that. I also photographed the Munich games, more difficult times. Sport is part of my life. I think life is a sport. It has to be first in the mind of some people. Even love is a sport, because you have to find the number one. And in love, when you are in second place, you are discouraged, while in sports, you still have the right to a silver medal.

With “Treize Days in France”, he takes a different picture of sports and also finds out what is happening around the Games.

I wanted to make this French film of 1968 which, a few months later, would again go to the barriers and change many things. We tend to recall our memories quickly. People tend to forget public signs. It’s like the Oscars, the Césars, we don’t remember who won what anymore, but we remember the joy and celebration. I think what will happen in France with these Games is celebration. Obviously, there will be medals, there will be competition. But I think that these millions of people, who will find themselves in France, will celebrate more than anything else. In football matches, fans, see the party they have before and after the match. This conference is interesting to me. I know that it is necessary to film in the society of the time more than the competitions, since the competitions are already filmed on television. It is a time of great joy. And that’s what I like most about sports in general, is that it brings people together. Tour de France, there is all of France on the roads, celebrating, drinking, eating, singing. And we need to think about something else, we need to dream. He did not die from an overdose.

Is the whole environment of sports and kinematic sports?

Obviously, since life is suspicious. A race is a complete suspense that takes ten seconds or runs in 50 minutes. These are micro-worlds. These are absolutely amazing shortcuts to the pleasures that life gives us but that we don’t appreciate every day. And there, suddenly, we are at 300 miles an hour. Tomorrow there will be a ceremony. I think people will be surprised, they will see more than usual. From the moment we awaken our senses, we better appreciate the present. The only thing that belongs to us is the present. And all these great events allow us to appreciate the present. It is the only thing that belongs to us and has no time to age. So you have to take advantage of it. Most of my friends have left Paris. I don’t want to miss this. It happens once every hundred years. I’m not going to go crazy to a crazy beach where I can go whenever I want. I don’t want to miss Paris tomorrow. I want, for my own memory, for my children, my grandchildren, to film all this in my head and maybe even with my cell phone.