DER Documentary
The Fenland (Le Brouck)
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By Colette Piault
black and white, 38 min, 1972
Pricing information and conditions
The Fenland was devised and shot in close collaboration with a group of eight local fenlanders, young men and women who live and work as market gardeners in the area of Saint Omer, Northern France. The film bears witness to a particular moment in time - a moment of recognition when these young agriculturalists, who belong to a relatively closed specific socio-economic group, ask themselves some hard practical questions about the social and economic problems facing their kind of agriculture.
The film aims to be sociological to the extent that it reveals and fixes a moment of social change. But it takes care not to freeze this in an ideological or political analysis; it does not try to smooth over the positions they take, which are often contradictory yet all the more illuminating for that.
It was the young fenlanders themselves who chose the sequences to film and the themes to bring up in the discussions. These young people offer their views on the future of the Fenland, on aspects of trade unionism in agriculture and the possible options open to them. More than the commentary, which serves merely as introduction or to make a link, it is the discussions off camera between the young people that really weave the film together.
Film Festivals, Screenings, Awards
Festival dei Popoli, Florence, 1972
Festival of Ethnographical & Sociological Film, Venice, 1972
Festival of Visual Culture, Finland, 2010
