The Adamant is a Day Center one of a kind. Opened in July 2010, it is a floating building. Built on the Seine, in the heart of Paris, it welcomes adults suffering from mental disorders, offering them a framework of care that structures them in time and space, helps them to reconnect with the world, to find a little ‘momentum. The team that animates it is one of those who try to resist as much as they can the decay and dehumanization of psychiatry. This film/documentary, in theaters on April 19, invites us to board it and meet the patients and caregivers who invent its daily life day following day. These excerpts from interviews with Nicholas Philibert, directorgive us the essence of a cinematographic approach as close as possible to its subject and to those who inhabit it.
The Adamant, an escape from the doldrums affecting psychiatry
« I started hearing regarding the Adamant a good fifteen years ago, when it was still just a project“, says director Nicolas Philibert. ” I have always been very attentive and very attached to the world of psychiatry. A world that is both disturbing and I dare say it like that, very stimulating: it constantly makes us reflect on ourselves, on our limits, our flaws, on the way the world works. Psychiatry is a magnifying glass, a magnifying mirror that says a lot regarding our humanity. For a filmmaker it is an inexhaustible field. » And to continue: L’Adamant is a place constantly in contact with the outside world, open to everything that is happening, and which welcomes all kinds of participants. Our shoot is an illuminating example. A place that strives to work on itself, in line with “institutional psychotherapy« . And then the place is very beautiful, that counts for a lot: the spaces, the materials, its location, the proximity to the water, when most reception places, without always being grim and cold, are content to be functional. »
“L’Adamant has managed to remain a lively and attractive place, both for patients and caregivers, because it does not rest on its achievements”. Nicholas Philibert
To be accepted, to have the presence of a camera accepted
« Before you can harvest, you have to sow: gain the trust of those you want to film. Luckily, part of the medical team and several patients knew some of my films – Nicolas Philibert made a documentary regarding the Clinique de La Borde in 1996 – It helped me. I took the time to present my project without trying to hide any hesitations I might have, sharing them on the contrary with each other. It also played. They understood that if I was demanding, I was first of all towards myself. Finally, they saw that I was ready to let myself be carried away, that the film was going to be built according to circumstances, contingencies, availability, and not from an overhanging position. Finally, there was a fairly spontaneous adhesion. Curiosity too. And for many, the desire to be. A few people asked not to be filmed, without being hostile
to our presence« .
“Sometimes it is enough to be there, attentive to what surrounds us, and to believe in it enough for this place to become a place, these men and these women the characters of a story, these seemingly innocuous actions of authentic stories. Nicholas Philibert
A construction filled with humanity
« I really wanted the patients to be heard. Their sensitivity, their lucidity, their humor sometimes. their words,
their faces. Their vulnerability, which would come here and there to meet ours. I wanted people to be able, if not to identify with them, at least to recognize what unites us, beyond our differences: something like a common humanity, the feeling of being part of the same world.. The caregivers are not set back in the film: we see them discussing with patients, leading workshops (drawing, accounts), co-hosting meetings, in short, they are fully in their role, attentive to each other , often discreet but there. We might say that treating is first of all treating the atmosphere, it’s not frontal, it’s subtle, often imperceptible, it goes through a thousand and one details« .
“Caregivers do not spend their time putting their status on the shoulder, taking themselves for what they are. The border between carers and patients, if there is a border, is not erected as a rampart”. Nicholas Philibert
A film like a praise of blur
« Even if it only gives a fragmentary and subjective vision of it, I believe that the film translates quite well the atmosphere, the spirit that animates the Adamant. I probably have some regrets. I didn’t know how to film Rhizome, the Friday conversation workshop, some of whose sessions are magnificent, and you hardly see the radio workshop, but editing inevitably leads to painful choices. The film ends in the fog… It’s an idea that I had very early on and that I was very attached to. I ended up having a little, but I would have liked it to be much more enveloping. Like a sort of eulogy to blur. A blurring of contours. Subtext: of this sacrosanct normality« .
See the Sur L’Adamant trailer, Golden Bear for Best Film at the 73rd Berlin Film Festival (February 2023) and in cinemas on April 19, 2023
• Sur L’Adamant, a film by Nicolas Philibert, France, Japan, 2022, 1h49. Distribution Diamond films. In theaters April 19, 2023.
