2022 Story of a production Story of a production
Les Films du Tambour de Soie was born in 1987. Before internet, even before the cellphone, at a time when the cutting edge of communications technology was called the fax and minitel.
Our first films where clearly focused on culture: painting, sculpture, photos and if we had been asked – thirty years ago – what was the production policy proposed by Les Films du Tambour de Soie, we would have promptly replied: films on art! We were at the time rather mono-thematic, producing documentaries that accompanied major exhibitions, in coproduction with national museums, broadcast on Arte or the now late Cinquième, and with successful home distribution on VHS cassettes.
Ten years later, the same question would have produced a moment of reflection: there were still films on art, films on history, films on society, and an opening on international coproductions.
Today, with the audiovisual scene completely shaken up, the question cannot be asked in exactly the same terms… I would speak about encounters, desires, shared pleasures that have led us to totally open up the spectrum of our productions, to always work with television (the different national, regional or local television companies) but also with cinema, to develop in this space hybrid documentary/animation objects, and even digital, as a playground for fun and innovation.
This assumed eclecticism, I would even say forcefully asserted, has offered us over these past years, Muriel Sorbo, my associate producer and myself, the opportunity to work in totally diversified fields.
We have very often shared these adventures on an international level, coproducing works with engaged partners. And we have often taken the risk of producing a first film. How to Save a Dead Friend is a perfect illustration.
I came across this project in its development phase, presented by its Russian producer, Ksenia Gapchenko, during a session of Eurodoc, the European programme of documentary coproduction, in October 2019.
Alexandre Cornu
Encounter moderated by Valentine Roulet.
In the presence of Alexandre Cornu (Les Films du Tambour de Soie.