Event

I, Pierre Riviere

(Rene Allio, France, 1976, DigiBeta, 130 min)

I, Pierre Riviere, Having Butchered My Mother, My Sister, and My Brother carefully assembles multiple perspectives on the infamous countryside murders that it re-enacts, an unusual approach that illustrates the ways that narrative produces truth. Allio shot the film entirely on location, using farmers from the Normandy region where the violence occurred. After an intricate retelling of the grim events, the film reflects on the deeper patterns of rural life imprinted on the land and its customs - the passing of the seasons, the raising of livestock, the harvesting of the crops - revealing the amazing continuity of these rhythms and traditions that stretch back to the 1830s. A haunting and beautiful pastoral epic that anticipates Ermanno Olmi's Tree of the Wooden Clogs (1978), I, Pierre Riviere also offers a profound mediation on history la longue duree, and the inherent instability of fiction and nonfiction within the cinema.