24 Passions

“Every year since 1980, I have filmed the Good Friday ceremony reconstructing the Passion of Christ in Burzet, a remote village in the Ardèche area, where for six hundred years, the local people have dressed up to celebrate and perpetuate this religious rite”, writes Gérad Courant, filmmaker know for the magnificent obstinacy of his long-term projects. Using film to record the minute variations that make up the course of history, just as Eustache intended in Rosières de Pessac, with the unpompous magic of the costumed scenes, in a mixture of archaism and present, the succession of these 24 Passion Plays confirms above all a unique passion; that of seeing. For Courant’s super 8 mm viewpoint is neither sociological nor picturesque. It is less concerned with describing a tradition than forces through repetition, revealing a multitude accidents, from the rain that forces the rite to remain on the steps of the church to the over-tight helmet of a minor player and a thousand other droll, moving and instructive details. In the end, it presents the singular way in which a poplar tradition relates to time