Les Chemins du Doc: open-air cinema on the Grands Causses road

L'affiche du festival itinérant. Causse Méjean

From August 15 to 19, the traveling documentary film festival will screen five screenings at the Château de Latour-sur-Sorgues, Nant, Lanuéjols, Hures-la-Parade and Florac.

For five days, the Chemins du Doc have the mission of connecting the territories and populations of the area around the documentary. Film lovers will have their heads in the stars between the quality of the films screened, but also by the fact of being outdoors, at nightfall, under the sky of the largest international reserve of starry sky in Europe in the Cévennes natural park.

The creation of Les Chemins du Doc is supported by Doc-Cévennes, which promotes documentary films by authors and plays a major role in the cultural development of the Cévennes. We find Guilhem Brouillet and Marion Blanchaud from the Champ-Contrechamp association who set up the Doc-Cévennes project and set their conditions for this year's programming, in partnership with the Arte television channel which has been showing the films for three years. « It has to beent films related to nature, animals and which take us on a journey », specifies Marion Blanchaud. « We must make the programs shine with the structural places of the region, these are stories of passion and friendship », adds Nathalie Semon, in charge of cultural development at Arte.

Bringing rural populations closer together with cinema

The documentaries, linked to environmental issues, talk about the forest lands of Europe, the Amazon rainforest, the banks of the Amu Darya River in Central Asia to the Fedchenko glacier and… the Causse Méjean. Marion Blanchaud, a former cinema teacher at the Louis-Feuillade high school in Lunel and retired since 2019, devotes a good part of her time to developing a network with associations, town halls of small towns (Guilhem Brouillet takes care of the towns) and festivals in order to have as many partners and influence as possible for the Chemins du Doc.

Marion Blanchaud of the Champ-Contrechamp association, at the origin of the Doc-Cévennes project. DR

The interest of this event is « political in the noble sense of the term » and must allow access to quality films that are not in theaters for populations from rural areas. « We ask the town halls to have a film speaker or an expert “ in connection with the nature of the film at the time of the screening, she indicates. « The goal is to bring together the public and the protagonists “ to create a social bond, so dear to the eyes of the film buff. « Socially, it is up to me to act for society and get ideas across. » As part of the « Cultural Summer » program, a short film made by the children of the Lanuéjols-L’Espérou leisure center will be presented in the first part of each session.

Thursday, August 15 at 9:15 p.m. at the Château de Latour-sur-Sorgues: Ikea, the lord of the forests. Friday, August 16 at 9:15 p.m. at the Parc du Claux, in Nant: La Transamazônica, between heaven and Earth. Saturday, August 17 at 9:15 p.m. on the Place de la Fontaine, in Lanuéjols: At the sources of the Aral Sea: from the desert to the ice. Sunday, August 18 at 9:15 p.m. at Takh, association for the Przewalski Horse, in Hures-la-Parade: Living among the living. Monday, August 19 at 9:15 p.m. in the courtyard of the castle in the Cévennes National Park: Amazonia: the murmurs of the forest.