Synopsis
In a poetic fashion, a game around daily gestures. Spontaneous choreography of the hands, offices where newspapers are cut, rooms where one paints, where one undresses. A hand passed through his hair, a wrist twirling on an archer, an obsessed search.
A word from Tënk
Stories told through gestures, furtively captured in their natural environment. Are we watching the history of the French people? Award-winning yet still relatively unknown filmmaker Guy Gilles, equally at ease in fictional features as in documentaries, gave us this visual research study on the unspoken mores of French society through its habits and day-to-day movements. Gilles’ camera, capturing methodically placed frames that seem to pay homage to the legendary Bresson, reveals with poetic ease the evocative power of body language and the codes through which our most banal actions communicate. Chanson de gestes is a wordless film with a lot to say.
Frédéric Savard
Archivist and programmer
