Journal de Rivesaltes 1941-1942

Jacqueline Veuve

Swiss Film Prize: Best Documentary 1998

DVD release January 26th 2010.

From August to October 1942, over 2250 Jews were deported from the internment camp of Rivesaltes to Auschwitz by way of Drancy. Among them were 110 children. Friedel Bohny-Reiter, a nurse with the Swiss Aid to Children, worked in this camp in the South of France. Like many others in the formerly unoccupied zone, it was run by the French. Once a military camp, it had been converted in 1941 into a transit camp regrouping Jewish, Gipsy and Spanish people living in the area or who had fled to the free zone as refugees. Thanks to the young nurse from Basel, many children were probably saved from certain death. The film, that came out in France in the fall of 1997, follows the nurse on a visit to that still intact site as well as through the pages of the journal she wrote in those dark days, published by Editions Zoë, Geneva in 1993.

( ... ) If there is a good story to tell, film is the ideal medium for it, and Swiss filmmaker Jacqueline Veuve is an expert. Her films are ethnographic jewels, and JOURNAL DE RIVESALTES 1941-42 particularly so. It is based on a discovery made during a holiday. In the Pyrennes near Perpignan, Veuve came across the ruins of the internment camp Rivesaltes. ( ... )
We see former nurse Friedel Bohny-Reiter in the festival hall of Locarno, down-to-earth, a very old witness to the events, a woman without a trace of vanity who asks herself how to reconcile an unbearable paradox: having saved people from certain death and yet, to a certain degree, to have been an accomplice.
How was it possible to bear it? By keeping the faith, she says. At the time and afterwards. What an answer. So many people lost their faith afterwards. Jacqueline Veuve made a film free of all pretensions, unnecessary drama and without selling out. Texts, drawings and gouaches from the diary, numerous photos (a.o. by Paul Senn from the 'Schweizer Illustrierte') as well as statements by survivors reflect Friedel Bohny-Reiter's memories of the time.
Martin Walder, Neue Zürcher Zeitung

The diary, Journal de Rivesaltes, provides the basis for Jacqueline Veuve’s narrative. The filmmaker embellishes it with beautiful but harrowing photos by Paul Seen, Friedel’s gouache paintings (her last refuge from despair), the words of a few survivors, miraculously preserved thanks to lengthy negotiations on her part. We also see her in the lonely place she used to frequent, and where today only wind-beaten ruins remain. And finally, the filmmaker has added fictional scenes in black and white, certainely unnecessary, which tie the different elements together. Yet this story is a strong one because of its harsh simplicity. The guilt of the French authorities is crushing, humiliating. And the little nurse struggles on from day to day, without any claim to heroism, in her fight against horror and guilt. “We have become accomplices to this trade in human beings”, she bitterly accuses. Many of these questions still concern humanitarian aid today. But not so long ago, Friedel acted anonymously, supported by nothing more than her faith.
Visions du Réel 1998

Jacqueline Veuve

Born in 1930 in Payerne. Filmmaker and ethnologist. 1955 Collaborates with Jean Rouch at the Musée de l'Homme in Paris, Department of Ethnographical and Sociological Films, and with Richard Leacock at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Film Department, Cambridge. 1998 Awarded Swiss Film Prize, Best Documentary for JOURNAL DE RIVESALTES 1941-1942

2010 C'ETAIT HIER
2008 UN PETIT COIN DU PARADIS
2005 LA NEBULEUSE DU COEUR
2005 LA PETITE DAME DU CAPITOLE
2002 JOUR DE MARCHE (Deutsche Untertitel / English Subtitles)
2000 LE SALAIRE DE L'ARTISTE
2000 DELPHINE SEYRIG, PORTRAIT D'UNE COMETE
1999 CHRONIQUE VIGNERONNE
1997 JOURNAL DE RIVESALTES 1941-1942
1997 BALADE FRIBOURGEOISE
1995 OH! QUEL BEAU JOUR
1994 L'HOMME DES CASERNES(Deutsche Untertitel)
1992 ARNOLD GOLAY, FABRICANT DE JOUETS
1992 L'EVANOUIE
1991 FRANOIS JUNOD, FABRICANT D'AUTOMATES
1991 LES EMOTIONS HELVETIQUES
1990 CHRONIQUE PAYSANNE EN GRUYERE - (Deutsche Untertitel)
1989 MARCELIN BABEY, TOURNEUR
1988 CLAUDE LEBET, LUTHIER
1988 MICHEL MARLETAZ, BOISSELIER
1988 FRANÇOIS PERNET, SCIEUR - SCULPTEUR
1988 LES FRERES BAPST, CHARRETIERS
1988 O. VEUVE ET J. DOUTAZ, TAVILLONEURS
1987 ARMAND ROULLIER
1987 LA FILIERE
1987 LE SABLE ROSE DE MONTAGNE
1986 PARLEZ-MOI D'AMOUR
1987 LA TRAVERSEE
1982 PARTI SANS LAISSER D'ADRESSE
1979 L'AVENIR A 15 ANS
1978 LA MORT DU GRAND-PERE OU LE SOMMEIL DU JUSTE - (English Edition)
1974 SUSAN
1974 NO MORE FUN, NO MORE GAMES
1975 SWISS GRAFFITI
1966 L'ECOLE ET LA VIE
1972 LA GREVE DE 18
1972 GENEVE, lE8 NOVEMBRE 1932
1972 LES LETTRES DE STALINGRAD
1966 MUSIQUE EN TETE
1966 DIMANCHE DE PINGUINS / DIMANCHE DE PINGUINS
1966 LE PANIER A VIANDE

Livres:
1992 UNE FEMME DE CINEMA de Bertil Galland
1983 LA MORT DU GRAND-PERE de Jacqueline Veuce

Internet

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Journal de Rivesaltes 1941-1942