Through her documentary films, Clarisse Hahn studies communities, codes of behavior, and the social role of the body. She cultivates very close relationships with the subjects she films, who she accompanies for long periods. In Karima (98 minutes, 2002) we followed for a whole year a young woman of Algerian origin, Karima, seeing her among her family, friends, and during S/M sessions where she played the role of dominatrix. Hôpital (37 minutes, 1999) is a journey into the both chaotic and well-ordered world of a geriatric ward. Ovidie (116 minutes, 2000) related the private daily life of a pornographic film actress and her husband.

"I search for situations and individuals with which I can identify, and which at the same time can put into perspective or call into question my personal value systems and the identity which I have constructed for myself. I view the daily lives of the people I film as so many propositions for living, so many possible solutions for dealing with the real."

"In Les protestants (85 minutes, 2005) I look at a bourgeois protestant family - my own - gathered together on the island of Noirmoutier. I explore the inter-personal relationships and the solutions which the family members find in order to live together. In one brief scene we see the family members playing a game in which the participants must form a circle and sit on each other's knees. Each person sits on the next so that no one touches the ground. In this way the family represents itself as a unified and interdependent group.

I try to understand how their way of life is organized and how it is transmitted from one generation to the next: through a feeling of religious affiliation, through different social activities such as society gatherings and the scout movement, or through a method of natural gymnastics with the motto: "be strong to be useful". The family members talk about the values which they adhere to and which they use to structure their lives. Little by little they let their doubts and contradictions show through, revealing the complexity of the relations which each person forms with their familial, religious and social environments. In the series of portraits which constitutes the film, the body is called into question, simultaneously hidden and revealed. It is the site of the relation with the other, but also the border which forms an obstacle. It is the site of individuality, but also of uniformity. The intimate tone which is often found in films dealing with the family is perturbed here by the fact that the persons filmed maintain a certain distance, even a reticence, in relation to the camera. It is this reticence that sets the tone of the film, in which the subjects, despite my natural presence among them, imposed an attitude of reserve. Before my camera they ceaselessly express a tension between tenderness and restrained emotion, between hieratic poses and relaxed attitudes."

Clarisse Hahn

(The film les protestants benefited from the support of the CNAP and the participation of le Fresnoy, studio national des arts contemporains)