Les Photos d'Alix

Alix leafs through her photo album with a friend. She shows him the pictures and tells how and when they were taken. Gradually her comment becomes less realistic and her descriptions take on a more poetic and imaginative character. Eventually her comment bears no relationship anymore to the photographs. Les photos d'Alix is a cinematic essay, with a light?hearted starting point, enabling director Jean Eustache to examine the way we represent reality. Photos and film may be able to capture reality, but reality does not have real meaning until the artist gives his interpretation of it. For Eustache the relationship between reality and its representation is the starting point for his total oeuvre. Therefore, the traditional dividing line between documentary truth and fiction is not really interesting to him. But as he was backed up by a positive response to his works he was never forced to make any concessions in order to make his feature films less 'real' or his documentaries less playful. Les photos d'alix was his last film. Eustache committed suicide in 1981. (International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam)