Screened as part of NZIFF 2010

Ne change rien 2009

Directed by Pedro Costa

In this intense contemplation of the singer’s art, Pedro Costa films Jeanne Balibar painstakingly rehearsing and recording. “A startling and lucid lesson in filming musical performance and a cinephilic marvel.” — New Yorker

France / Portugal In English and French with English subtitles
98 minutes B&W

Director, Photography

Producers

Abel Ribeiro Chaves
,
Sébastien de Fonseca
,
Cédric Walter

Music

Rodolphe Burger

With

Jeanne Balibar
,
Rodolphe Burger
,
Hervé Loos
,
Arnaud Dieterlen
,
Joël Theux

Festivals

Cannes (Directors’ Fortnight), New York, Vancouver 2009; Rotterdam 2010

Elsewhere

The Portuguese director Pedro Costa has filmed his friend, the French actress and singer Jeanne Balibar, hard at work, painstakingly, repeatedly rehearsing and recording a handful of torch songs, and withstanding some severe tutelage in the performance of an Offenbach piece. Costa, who topped many cinephiles’ recent best-of-decade lists, is best known for a series of films which honour the semi-destitute inhabitants of a derelict Lisbon housing estate. (The Film Society is hoping to bring the films to New Zealand at last in a retrospective in 2011.) Here he applies his stark, real-time aesthetic to conjure an intense contemplation of a singer’s dogged, passionate dedication to becoming one with the song. — BG

“His sensual, velvety, high-contrast black-and-white images capture the exertions and exultations of music-making… Both a startling and lucid lesson in filming musical performance and a cinephilic marvel.” — Richard Brody, New Yorker