To film the work of this elder and his nephew Laurent during the transhumance of their sheep, the septuagenarian climbed 2,000 meters. “Without the motivation of the film, I don’t know if I wouldn’t have thrown in the towel,” he admits.
The two shepherds from Bernard Lataste’s latest film putting a bell around the neck of one of their sheep.
Bernard Lataste
Exciting characters
“There are tons of documentaries on transhumance. What this film tells is above all the transmission of ancestral knowledge, of a passion between two pure and hard-line mountain people. » During the filming, Bernard was marked by “the wealth of empirical knowledge of the shepherd, this mine of wisdom that one does not learn at school”. How to cut a stick, how to recognize the warning of rain in a sheep that is shaking itself… It is these details of a pastoral practice in danger that he transposed to the screen.
Bernard Lataste
Transhumance in the rain filmed by Bernard Lataste.
“We, the amateurs, focus on people in whom institutional filmmakers are not interested. »
The two heroes will attend the premiere this Friday evening, “delighted that we are interested in their story”. After the screening, they will debate with the spectators, who are expected to be numerous. In fact, Bernard’s films are used to full theaters. Modest, this native of Marmande evokes luck and local effect. “We, the amateurs, put the emphasis on people in whom institutional filmmakers are not interested,” he adds.
The success of this autodidact can also be explained by his work. Behind the scenes of the sixty minutes of film, there are 300 hours of editing. Bernard wants the spectators to leave their seats “happy to have discovered these characters, beautiful images of this Aure valley and the passion of these shepherds”.
