Bruno Ulmer

Bruno Ulmer did not develop the art of listening and the desire to understand the world only through cinema. His professional path is, for this reason, original enough. After undertaking studies in medicine, he enrolled in business school, without even knowing what he would do there. Already used to art exhibitions however, he quickly forged his cinematographic identity. Saying himself that he never had the inclination towards fantasy or fiction, Ulmer naturally turned towards documentary. It was one of his first works, Casa Marseille Inch’Allah, about clandestine immigrant miners from Morocco, which gave him his starting point.

The majority of his early films, from Casa Marseille to Petites Bonnes, were filmed with a small video camera and no crew. With this technique, Bruno Ulmer tried to reduce the distance which can separate a director from their subject. In the film presented in Helsinki, Welcome Europa, one finds again this proximity, this ‘‘softness’’ according to Ulmer, which nevertheless does not dilute any of the dark sadness of the social reality. The camera is not simply an observing eye but a sympathetic one, truly eager to understand what it sees. Ulmer speaks about a kind of technical and human semiology : the proximity of the frame to the people is a way of reflecting his real interest in the individuals. Cinema, all things considered, is for him not only a question of narrative, but also of respecting the story of each person.

In a film like Welcome Europa (the description of a continent dreamed of by immigrants, which later becomes hell on Earth), the subject is not covered journalistically, as a pure social problem. It is rather the suffering of each one that Ulmer decides to show. Before filming, he travelled all over Europe in order to find the right locations, to make first meetings without the camera. This explains the level of trust displayed by the young men interviewed. In addition, the director has a sharp eye. He explains that his documentary hides a paradox : “it is a film on the wanderers and on the random (…) but the locations allowed me a precise anticipation of the film’’. The various techniques of Bruno Ulmer bind dramatisation and sociological purpose. For him however, the human side always takes precedent. To collect realities requires confidence, but also a visual imagination of the representation of this reality : to mix black and white and colour, to mix fiction and scenes of social horror is above all a question of honesty and compassion. What counts is the intimate testimonies and the definition they give to contemporary society.

Finally, for Bruno Ulmer, approaching reality cannot consist of only showing it. He works hand in hand with different associations, allowing an easier contact between members of civil society and artists. During his films, the director also tries to find solutions for the problems of each speaker : far from the kind of voyeurism which would consist of filming in a detached way and then returning home. Ulmer doesn’t conceive his work to be without results, in a world he seeks to denounce and unsettle. It’s obviously within the same spirit and code of ethics that Ulmer will build his next projects : a documentary film on the war between Latino gangs (Evangelists on the one side and Theologists of the Liberation on the other) in Los Angeles and San Salvador, and a project on Sahraouis Refugees. More surprisingly, an already written feature film, entitled Fratres, will deal with the story of Sid Ahmed Rezala - ‘‘the killer of trains’’ - between Marseille, Lisbon and Algiers. Once again, it’ll be a real story incarnated by nonprofessional actors : be it fiction or documentary, reality is definitively at the centre of Bruno Ulmer’s work.

Ariane Beauvillard