A National Film Board of Canada production

Since the 1960s, celebrated animator Pierre Hébert has experimented with the full gamut of styles, from abstract animation to more narrative approaches, as well as collage, drawing and live performance. Employing an arresting black-and-white palette punctuated with animated flourishes, Scratches of Life: The Art of Pierre Hébert unwinds the thread of the scratch-on-film technique, guiding us through the inspiring labyrinth of Hébert’s life and work. The intimate, creative approach pays homage to his protean oeuvre, fusing his human and artistic journeys into one. Director Loïc Darses in turn relies on novel imagemaking concepts to capture the imprint of an extraordinary artist who, to this day and even while battling illness, continues to create, striving to share his vision of new forms of life.

ONE-LINER
Scratches of Life: The Art of Pierre Hébert guides us through the inspiring, poetic labyrinth that is the life and work of this celebrated animation filmmaker.

TWO-LINER
Employing an arresting black-and-white palette punctuated with animated flourishes, Scratches of Life: The Art of Pierre Hébert unwinds the thread of the scratch-on-film technique, guiding us through the inspiring labyrinth of the celebrated animator’s life and work. Loïc Darses captures the imprint of an extraordinary artist who continues to create to this day, striving to share his vision of new forms of life.

“Every film seeks to answer a mystery.” That stirring proclamation by Pierre Hébert perfectly encapsulates the spirit of Loïc Darses’ creative, moving documentary portrait of the celebrated animator. Though the scratch-on-film technique remains Hébert’s preferred cinematic language, his life’s work has explored a multiplicity of methods and genres. Beginning in the 1960s, he experimented with the full gamut, from abstract animation to more narrative approaches, as well as collage, drawing and live performance. As he embraced these eclectic techniques throughout his career, the former anthropology student never stopped reflecting on the challenges of the world we live in. While some of his output arguably constitutes activist cinema, a more apt description is to be found in his own words: he constantly sought to “capture the fleeting, unknowable ignition of thoughts.”

Employing an arresting black-and-white palette that brings out the full beauty of the filmmaker’s animated flourishes, Scratches of Life: The Art of Pierre Hébert unwinds the thread of the scratch-on-film process, guiding the audience through the inspiring labyrinth that is Hébert’s life and work. From the very first shots, the film proceeds along an evocative dual course. As the camera slowly moves through shadowy realms suffused by abstract flickerings of light, a calm face appears. Suggesting that the man and the artist are indivisible, Darses deploys a mise-en-scène that aims to render Hébert’s body, and body of work, visible and concrete. Mirroring Hébert’s passion for archaeology, the film scratches away at the myriad strata of a protean oeuvre, ultimately revealing it to be profoundly cohesive.

Scratches of Life: The Art of Pierre Hébert makes use of a chronological structure that gives the animator space to reflect on the key phases of his artistic career, from his striking early works at the NFB—a series of abstract shorts that began with Op Hop – Hop Op (1966)—to his recent documentary animation cycle, Places and Monuments. As Hébert’s words gently carry viewers along, the film gradually discards the notion of maintaining distance, which is usually intrinsic to the biographical genre. The intimate, poetic directing style pays homage to the diverse layers of imagemaking and the vast array of forms central to Hébert’s process, fusing his human and creative journeys into one.

Inspired by the insatiable yearning for discovery that continues to inhabit Hébert even as he battles illness, Darses’ film imperceptibly draws closer to its subject, reverently recording his humble, lucid and determined insights. Recalling the unavoidable personal sacrifices, happier times and moments of doubt and transcendence that have shaped him, Hébert opens up with candour and emotion. The product of an authentically human encounter between two filmmakers of different generations, Scratches of Life: The Art of Pierre Hébert commemorates the work and immortalizes the legacy of an extraordinary artist who continues to create to this day, striving to share his vision of new forms of life.

Which film served as your introduction to Pierre Hébert’s work? What were your first impressions? (200 words)

Before I started working on the film, I mostly just knew the name Pierre Hébert: I’d seen Memories of War in a film studies course and I vaguely remember hearing about La plante humaine. But it was only after viewing Op Hop – Hop Op, early on in my research phase, that I was truly hooked. It’s a radical, hypnotic film, very close to something Malevich might have done, and it drew me in with its uncompromising formalism. And with its stroboscopic alternating flashes of black and white, that film even provided the central referent for the expressive palette of Scratches of Life. My team and I made every effort to embrace, as much as possible, the aesthetic essence of Op Hop – Hop Op, which was a brief but crucial tipping point in Hébert’s career. It was also one of the inspirations for the decision to make my film entirely in black and white, and to have our protagonist and the elements of our minimalist settings appear and disappear using the flashes of a strobe light placed behind the subjects, to poetically evoke the gradual appearance of scratched marks on celluloid. So it’s accurate to say it was my actual contact with Pierre Hébert’s work that lent my film its form, and it was important for me to pay tribute to that, precisely by having Scratches of Life open with Pierre watching Op Hop – Hop Op, first in a large theatre and then on an old TV screen in our interview setting.

What prompted some of your directing choices, like shooting in black and white and incorporating flashes of animation? (200 words)

I’ve just mentioned the use of black and white and how Op Hop – Hop Op informed it, but even though all our formal decisions were, as I implied, meant to reference Pierre Hébert’s scratch-on-film technique in the context of a live-action documentary shoot (albeit a highly staged one), I felt that a substantial part of that art form was still missing from my film’s structural approach. That led to the idea of having Pierre intervene directly on the image, after the editing was done, by scratching over it. That sort of palimpsest aspect really appealed to me, and I also loved the gesture of giving this animator, who expresses himself in words throughout the whole film, the opportunity to have the last word on this film that I was making about him, by applying to the final edit a layer of meaning derived from his medium of choice: scratch-on-film. That perspective was a great inspiration to Pierre, who took to heart that important step in the film’s creative process; he saw it as a chance to tangibly inform the symbolic scope of Scratches of Life. So as a filmmaker, I’m etching the imprint of the man, but the man in turn etches his own image, leaving the audience a testimonial infused with poignant, authentic subjectivity.

Given Pierre Hébert’s prolific output, how did you choose the archival material for the film? (200 words)

Since the structure of Scratches of Life was inspired by avenues previously explored in Henri-Georges Clouzot’s The Mystery of Picasso and Wim Wenders’ The Salt of the Earth—the former reflecting on how to stage the work of the famous painter and the latter on how to relate a photographer to his pictures within a filmed interview—I knew that the choice of archival material would be critical from the moment I decided to sit Pierre in front of an old TV that would show all of his works. And even though I already knew, when shooting, that the through line of my film would be Pierre’s lifelong relationship with scratch-on-film, it was important to me that we show the protagonist all his creative achievements, to put him in a position to reflect on the creative actions he’s been led to perform during his life. The goal there was to go further than mere technical or anecdotal analysis of the major films of his career, and in so doing tap into a more fragile and intangible aspect of the man—to reflect on and share the actual meaning of the creative impulse, its importance and its existential resonance. Then, at the editing stage, my editor and I were guided by the idea of immersing the audience in Hébert’s works and giving them the opportunity and the time to really grasp the spirit that informed them, rather than just using them for strictly decorative purposes. There again, it was the most virtuosic of those bursts of scratches on film that found their way onto our screen.

In his performance-based work, Pierre Hébert has often relied on improvisation. Did improvisation also play a role in Scratches of Life, either in the interviews or the scenes of the filmmaker at work? (200 words)

Oddly enough, no. Scratches of Life is probably the most carefully planned and prepared documentary I’ve made. The narrative thread was set from the earliest drafts of the script; I had decided on my questions well in advance of the shoot; I had thought at length about the themes I wanted to cover with Pierre beforehand; the technical aspects of every shot were precisely planned, and the storyboard was pretty close to the final result; the interview setup was extensively tested and was even unusually cumbersome (two cameras, two sets of tracks and dollies, a teleprompter, several technicians, etc.). Even in editing, we primarily concentrated on drawing out the thread that had been originally conceived, and not “trying to find the film,” as is often the case with creative documentaries. Of course, the shoot had more than its share of surprises, discoveries, setbacks, minor miracles and precious gems, as shoots always do, but our limited shooting time meant that we had to be very efficient and highly prepared to capture all the footage we needed to tell the story of the film. I would even go so far as to say that in this specific creative context, it was this extreme preparation that gave us the freedom to be truly imaginative. Put another way: we were fortunate in not being captive to that restrictive framework—quite the contrary. That said, it’s true that all this is fairly paradoxical when you look at Pierre Hébert’s approach to performance and his work, but I think that unusual mix of working methods resulted mostly from my own personality as a creator. I might even say that Scratches of Life is the product of that meeting of two distinct filmmakers: two connected but unique ways of seeing and making cinema.

As a filmmaker, which of Pierre Hébert’s reflections about the craft affected you most? (200 words)

I think that having the chance to make a film like Scratches of Life so early in my career is an immense privilege. First, because Pierre Hébert has all the hallmarks of an exceptional artist, with a unique body of work that has unparalleled scope; and on a personal level, it was an undreamt-of opportunity for me to make a film about a filmmaker’s entire life and work, while I myself am still at the beginning of my filmmaking journey. That invaluable touchpoint with the deeper meaning of a life of creation, with all its inflections, meanderings and moments of grace, opened the way to a profound transformation in my own relationship to creating. I feel that having been in such close proximity to an artist who works with his hands, and who ascribes such importance to the creative gesture itself, over and above the usual “tyranny of the outcome,” has helped me reframe the deeper meaning of my artistic engagement and my filmmaking practice. I’ve come out of this experience transformed, of course, but also more honed, with a more focused vision of the style I want to give my films, and a refreshed sense of how I want to approach my creative projects.

If you had to introduce Pierre Hébert’s work to someone, what three films would you show them first, and why? (200 words)

It would be Op Hop – Hop Op first, for the reasons I listed above. Then, Memories of War, an undeniable pinnacle of Pierre Hébert’s filmography both in terms of its form, because scratch-on-film had never been used to such stunning effect for narrative purposes, and its content, which unfortunately is now more relevant than ever. And third, with no false modesty, I would suggest Scratches of Life: The Art of Pierre Hébert, because I believe that the artist truly shines in it, with all his verve and the bursts of genius that flow through his most memorable works, and also that the man opens up in a deeply moving way, which casts his complex but bountiful body of work in a new light.

Pierre Hébert often talks about the importance of mystery in art. Now that you’ve learned so much about the artist and the man, is there still an element of mystery in the things about him that fascinate you? (200 words)

That’s a really good question. At the moment it’s a pretty difficult one for me to answer, since I’ve spent most of the past two years “inside Pierre Hébert’s head,” and it feels as though I’ve shone a light into every corner of his thoughts. But when I think about it, it’s obvious that I’ve just seen the tip of the huge Hébert iceberg… I think that this ever-invisible or intangible dimension of the persona resides in his unwavering persistence, especially in the face of his illness. In his dogged determination to keep creating, on a daily basis, against all odds, in fragile gestures of astounding sincerity, testifying to his survival and continued existence. And in his sharp gaze as well, eyes still shining the way they did when he was 30, though now tempered by the years (and the countless reels of film). And finally, in his candid generosity, which he conveys to anyone who will listen… So “the mystery of Hébert” is that of a master who is disarmingly humble, pointing with the tip of his blade to the path he has traced while scratching on film: a rare and rich gift to us happy apprentices.

Contact NFB publicist for high-resolution poster for print.

Contact NFB Publicist for high-resolution images for print.