Midway through filming “Our Body,” a sprawling documentary about the gynecological ward of a Paris hospital, the movie’s director, Claire Simon, received some medical news of her own: She had breast cancer.
Four weeks into the shoot, Simon had discovered a lump beneath her armpit. But rather than cease production, she decided to improvise and turn the camera on herself.
“I had to film a lot of naked women,” Simon in a recent video interview. “Then I was naked, too, and I was just like them. This changed my point of view entirely; it helped me cope and be calm in the face of my own sickness.”
Motivated by the desire to show what she called the body’s “hidden truth,” Simon is but one patient among dozens in her documentary’s celebration of the body, depicted in all its wondrous and terrible iterations. “Our Body” — which played in this year’s Berlin International Film Festival and is showing at Film Forum in New York from Aug. 4 — assembles intimate patient-doctor consultations and surgical procedures into something like a volume of short stories. The subjects include abortion, artificial insemination, birth, gender transitioning, menopause and, eventually, disease and death.
The veteran French filmmaker, a prolific creator of documentaries and fictional narratives that blur the boundaries between those two modes, has made a career out of turning the experiences of ordinary people into epic tapestries of human life.
Often, she begins with a place. A Paris train station provides the setting for two films: “Gare du Nord,” (2013) an ensemble drama about briefly intersecting lives, and “Human Geography (2013), a documentary composed of interviews with the station’s inhabitants.
“If you dive into pockets of everyday life, the world becomes very large,” Simon said. In “Our Body,” she added, she was concerned by questions like, “How does our civilization treat the female body?,” and, “What is the relationship between the body and words?”
By capturing long, uninterrupted scenes of patients speaking with their doctors, “Our Body,” underscores the alienating nature of medical jargon. Yet these observational scenes also create room for the kind of bracingly personal testimonies that have long characterized Simon’s work. See, for instance, her 2018 documentary “Young Solitude,” a series of frank discussions with suburban high schoolers; or “Mimi” (2003), a kind of hangout movie in which Simon’s gregarious friend Mimi relates her life story as she drifts through Nice, France, her hometown.
Simon was also raised in southern France (though she was born in Britain) by a family of painters and writers. She studied Arabic and anthropology in Algeria before teaching herself how to edit and use a camera. In the 1980s, she began making narrative shorts and eventually received a scholarship to attend a prestigious documentary workshop led by Jean Rouch, known as the father of cinéma-vérité.
It was around this time that Simon discovered some of her most crucial inspirations, like Raymond Depardon, Robert Kramer and Frederick Wiseman — “my great master,” she said. Wiseman’s influence is apparent in Simon’s fascination with public spaces and lengthy conversations. “The Competition” (2016), a study of the admissions process for La Fémis, France’s most prestigious film school, seems to take up his mantle — Simon herself has described the film as “Wisemanesque.”
According to Abby Sun, the director of artists’ programs at the International Documentary Association, Simon’s work nevertheless represents a significant departure from Wiseman’s detached and unobtrusive style.
Simon’s movies are “metatextual, and they exhibit a knowing, personal touch. They show her as part of the fabric of the place or situation she’s filming,” Sun said, citing as examples a series of films Simon had made about her daughter, the philosopher Manon Garcia.
The relationship between Simon and her subjects helps determine the shape of the film. This connection is key to her form of auteurism.
“There’s a clear sense that there’s something collaborative going on, that there’s been a dialogue between the filmmaker and the subject,” said Eric Hynes, a film curator at the Museum of Moving Image.
“Nowadays, we’re constantly asking, ‘Where’s the consent? How do we know that the subject feels comfortable with what’s being filmed?’,” he added. “Claire has been at the vanguard of what we consider a responsible way of making documentaries for 20 plus years now.”
Simon said although she considered herself a sloppy camera operator, she refuses to give the job to anyone else. Looking through the viewfinder allowed her to connect more organically with what she’s filming, she said. “If I’m holding the camera, I’m able to improvise and change my mind and I don’t have to bother with justifying myself,” she said. “As a woman, it’s a huge relief.”
Having successfully undergone cancer treatment, Simon isn’t just relieved, she’s energized. Toward the end of the interview in late July, Simon gleefully announced that it was her birthday that day. She had just turned 68. “I feel that I have many, many more films to make,” she said.
“Mr. Wiseman is 93, and he’s made another beautiful one this year, like he does every year,” she added. “That means I’ve got a little time yet.”
