A Great Day in France/Birth
Un grand jour en France / Naissance
1981 / France / French / Color / 42 min / Video
Script, Cast: Robert Kramer
Director of Photography: Richard Copans
Photography: Michel Lecocq
Editing: Francine Sandberg
Music: Barre Phillips
Sound: Jean Minordo, Thierry Jeandroz
Lighting: Daniel Defontaine, Alain Pernot
Producer: Martine Durand
Cast: Valerie Coquerel-Jeanneau, Yves Jeanneau, Catherine Maynard, and others
Production Company, Source: Institut National de l’Audiovisuel (INA)
The film follows the days that go before and after a woman’s maternity: her admittance to a hospital, the birth, the return home with the new-born, the reception by the father and the two little sisters, and the daily life in the family. The great day, May 11, 1981, is also the day that the left—la gauche won the presidential elections.
“This Great Day is very complex. The new-born? We don’t know very well what’s moving in him. He is an organism programmed to survive. Noellie will do everything to live. He’s a message of the future. He will live in a future that we don’t know. He is a ring in the chain.”
—Robert Kramer (Festival Cinema Giovani 1997)
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• Robert Kramer Retrospective | FALN | In the Country | The Edge | Ice | People’s War | Milestones | Scenes from the Class Struggle in Portugal | Guns | A Great Day in France / Birth | As Fast as You Can | Fear | Doc’s Kingdom | Route One / USA | Dear Doc | Berlin 10/90 | Video Letters: Robert Kramer and Stephen Dwoskin | Leeward | Point de départ / Starting Place | Walk the Walk | The Coat | Ghosts of Electricity | SayKomSa | Cities of the Plain | Against Forgetting |