2021 Sacem Day Sacem Day
The Sacem naturally associates with this new edition of the États généraux du film documentaire at Lussas. Alongside all those who bring to life documentary creation, through their talent and daily work, our society will naturally testify to the strong bonds connecting music and the image.
The director, composer and screenwriter are the three authors of a work of the audiovisual or cinematic arts. The Sacem counts among its members a large number of composers of music for images as well as nearly three thousand five hundred author-directors. We give them each year our unceasing support. Aid funds for the creation of original music are distributed through nine programmes of aid including feature-length films, short films, documentary, fiction and TV series. Accompanying artistic careers, encouraging the screening of works and the renewal of repertories, promoting the emergence of new talents and the integration of young professionals, these are among our priorities. This year, more than ever, the Sacem is committed to acting on them.
As has become customary, the Sacem proposes a carte blanche day in honour of a significant talent. This year the day devoted to the composer Béatrice Thiriet will be rich in discussion and the projection of fine films. In the evening, we will award the prize for Best Music Documentary to Bernard George for his film Looking for the Music of Antiquity. The previous day, the public will have also had the joy of discovering or rediscovering Antoine Polin’s film Living with Imperfection, which received support from the Sacem.
An indispensable meeting place for documentary film, these six days of festival will honour musical creation associated with the art, through a programme of extremely high quality.
Excellent festival to all!
Patrick Sigwalt
Composer, Chairman of the Sacem Board of Governors
As a composer trained in the contemporary classical tradition, nothing predisposed me for a career writing music for films. I was “discovered” for the cinema by Pascale Ferran, who commissioned the original music for Coming to Terms with the Dead, her first film.
I went on to write the original music for some fifty odd films, feature-length fictions like Lady Chatterley, Toute la beauté du monde, My Father’s Guests, or documentaries, such as The Specialist, Pueblo en vilo, L’Albatros au cœur de la tempête…
I also directed a medium-length documentary for France Televisions, La Lettre de Mourad, which was screened before my oratorio also entitled La Lettre de Mourad, commissioned by Vingtième Théâtre and the Forum des images.
And recently I created a “confinement letter” as an answer to an invitation by the Cinémathèque française to its artist members during the confinement, Le Jour d’après.
I am hence well qualified to talk about the relations between music and the image.
Music and images create a unique composition in each project by a filmmaker.
An original score is one of the elements of film language, just like the scenario, but also like the sets or the image.
Music has the infinite weight of lightness.
Its expressive power no longer needs demonstrating.
Great filmmakers know how to use it to marvellous effect!
Béatrice Thiriet
Screenings dédicated to Bétarice Thiriet hosted by Jérôme Diamant-Berger, in the presence of Dominique Cabrera.