The space of care: Fernand Deligny, Renaud Victor and the making of Ce gamin, là (1975)

Abstract

ABSTRACT This essay attends to the 1975 documentary film Ce gamin, là, a collaboration between educator Fernand Deligny, filmmaker Renaud Victor and the inhabitants of the para-institutional space of care for non-verbal autistic children that Deligny established in the Cévennes in the late 1960s. Less a documentary illustrative of ways of caring for autistic children than an experiment in observational filmmaking as an enactment of care, Ce gamin, là provides an articulation of care renewed through embodied and situated connections among filmmakers, participants and viewers and actualised in the fostering of alternative political communities, ways of living together across abilities and new modalities of viewership.