Documentaries 50/60

CASTLES AND RIVERS

Georges RÉGNIER
1961
Version : French, English, Spanish, Italian
Duration : 21'
Format : 35 mm., Mpeg 4
Colors
Scriptwriter : Georges REGNIER
Producer : ARMOR Films - Fred ORAIN
Country France
With Texte dit par Nadine ALARI
Music Maurice FLEURET
Picture Lucien JOULIN
Stage set Regions : Limousin, Quercy, Périgord, Marche
Archive footage - Rivers of Aquitaine seen from the air,
- Image of the Eyzies cave with Palaeolithic frescoes: cave painting, negative hand, sculptures,
- Wild horses,
- Old towns, castles, churches and treasures of Aquitaine,
- Village and peasant life, market, work in the fields (ploughing, haymaking),
- Enamel work. Work on the Aubusson tapestry,
- Jean Lurçat in his workshop,
- Dam on the Dordogne,
- Pottery and porcelain workshop (painting).

Original title : Châteaux et Rivières

This is the land of rivers. They give the provinces they unite the same luminous, peaceful face. These provinces are La Marche, Limousin, Quercy and Périgord. The film takes us on an itinerary through them, an unusual itinerary in that it unfolds not in space, but in time. Time here is a guide that doesn’t say too much and has deliberately left out dates, names and facts. It is content to indicate a path along which you can stroll, zigzagging from the caves of Les Eyzies to the Dordogne dam, from the Padirac chasm to the porcelain workshops of Limoges, from prehistoric frescoes to the compositions of Jean Lurçat that the weavers of Aubusson translate into tapestry. It’s a journey that blends naguére and yesteryear, and loses itself in the reflections of rivers.