Original subtitles

Jean-Daniel Pollet died on September 9, 2004.

For two years, he had worked on what he knew would be his last film.

A film whose editing was completed on paper only a few days before his death.

South of France. Summer 2003.

I wanted to know if I was able

to last a while longer with the camera,

to photograph,

day by day.

The goal being not to spend any day

without taking pictures.

At least one picture,

and no limits imposed.

I try to...

...put back in as much energy in taking pictures

as the flowers give me themselves.

I am so fond of the Mediterranean

so I don't feel far from home in the least.

It's the inland part of the Mediterranean here.

Only the sea is missing.

But I have it in my head.

There is no beginning.

Each day is the beginning of a new year.

Thousands and millions of cycles are ongoing,

and spin together, in parallel.

Day after day, I hear the wounded heart of the world,

beating against the glass of my pictures.

The red is on.

Rolling!

Silence.

Silence.

Enjoyment.

Effort.

Happiness.

Tenderness.

Helplessness.

Absence.

Presence.

The red is on.

Let's begin. Rolling!

There is no beginning.

There never was.

There is only the now,

and the forever.

Day after day, the radio reels in tragedies.

Its daily routine is different from mine.

Time never plays to a sell-out crowd.

Click-clack.

I click therefore I think.

Click-clack. I am what I see.

Click-clack. I click therefore I think.

I clack therefore I... What?

When it comes to thought, there are only clicks.

Click-clack.

The red remembers the green like a beginning,

a renewal.

Click-clack.

Each click is a beginning.

Each clack is an ending.

Silence streams between the two.

I don't take photographs.

I inhale silence.

Click-clack,

doesn't mean "I see"

but "I go".

I go and I clear out.

I move quickly towards nothingness

I leave the void behind me.

I leave behind what I see.

To see is a beginning.

To leave behind a non-ending, a postponed ending.

Click-clack against the tick-tock... tick-tock...

...tick-tock...tick-tock...

The snapshot against time.

Day after day, the film takes shape in me.

Perfect darkness.

Silence.

Terror.

Curiosity.

Seasons.

Here on earth.

Injustice.

Tranquility.

Love.

Time does not pass.

Time stands still.

We are the ones passing through it.

We are pictures.

The pictures come one after another,

flowing like a river that leads nowhere.

Pure motion.

To see or to drink.

For a long time, I chose not to choose.

But one day, there's no choice anymore.

Clack...Clack... Clack...Clack.

Detoxification, my beautiful worry.

Back to square one.

Click...

...is the most beautiful sound in the world.

Click.

Click.

Click.

Click-clack.

To see or to drink.

For a long time, I chose not to choose.

The days come one after another

and look the same until they don't

because of their similarity.

The days come one after another and look like me.

And I don't look like myself anymore

because of the lack of similarity.

I am a film, untouched by time.

This film is not a last will,

only a journey in a year.

It's the journey about myself I'm undertaking this time.

I'm proceeding around myself.

My journey will last a whole year.

Day after day.

Month after month.

Tough words.

Click-clack.

At least one each day,

for 365 days.

Each picture contains the world.

Each picture contains the whole world.

A thousand pictures

don't give me the world better than just one would.

Why continue to take them,

day after day?

For the silence I inhale,

exhale,

between clicks and clacks.

Infinite hundredth of a second.

When the weather's nice, we open the windows.

When the weather's wonderful, we spend our time outside.

When it gets dark...Magical!

I already have a whole film,

a film in my hands.

It was in my head, and it came out.

Click-clack, the exit is this way.

Emergency exit.

I have found the way to deceive misfortune.

I don't dream of films anymore.

I'm making one.

Click-clack.

Cinema carries on.

The miracle of motion goes on,

starts anew,

other and differently.

Silence.

I move in the dark towards the paths of nothingness.

Day after day.

Cinema carries on.

Unbreakable glass of cinema,

upon which the pictures of the day scatter,

like a handful of pebbles in the sea.

Day after day, the film takes shape inside me.

It passes before my eyes, incomplete,

and yet perfect in that moment.

I see its cracks, its limits.

It's not catastrophic.

We could stop here

or go on.

Let's go on.

I know the black well.

I have visited it three times.

When one comes back from the black, one has forgotten everything.

One has to start again.

Are we still far away?

We're here.

Where are we?

3 degrees below zero.

Unbreakable glass of the pictures upon which the news of the day

hail like a winter gust in the middle of summer.

I'm not getting enough air.

I've been prescribed oxygen.

At night,

I sleep with a mask.

During the day, I take pictures.

I inhale time.

The pictures don't come out,

they go in the glass cage of the camera.

10 pictures, 10 birds.

I can hear their wings flutter.

It makes for a strange combination inside.

It sounds like a concert.

Here I am, the conductor.

Silence.

Music.

Unbreakable glass of words thrown from up high onto a page.

Very few will suffice.

Unbreakable glass of two fruits,

passing through the seasons always in the same spot.

I am an orange.

Françoise is an orange.

We are two oranges passing through time in the same house.

We arrived in this place at the same time.

At the same time.

Solitude of the oranges.

The flowers come and go, the oranges remain.

There is no beginning.

There's you.

There's me and the red of time between you and me.

Let's go.

Rolling!

I'm unable to comment on what I'm photographing.

Nor can I really predict what pictures

I'll be taking the following day.

On the other hand,

I have a global vision of this film

but it eludes any sort of description.

I know the black very well.

I have visited it three times.

They call it "coma".

It's the clinical term.

I call it "black".

Black.

Black.

Black.

When one comes back from the black, one has forgotten everything.

One has to start again.

At the beginning,

there is no beginning.

Every black is a renewal without beginning.

To start reading again.

To write.

To say.

Tranquility of the oranges.

We are two oranges passing through time,

in the same nothingness.

The oranges fall silent.

The oranges speak to each other.

Samba oranges.

Poulos oranges.

Cinema equation.

I have to produce an effort to hold the camera.

My hands are heavy,

heavy from all the iron supporting my arms

since that train has broken me.

The eye never betrays me.

And the books...

Any one of them opened at random

proclaims a truth

which I make mine at once,

which I imbue to the film, as an enigma.

The eye never betrays me.

There is no decisive moment.

Each and every moment is decisive.

I photograph thought.

The daily lot of my thought.

We know where a sentence begins and ends

but a series of pictures

has no beginning

and no end.

A series of pictures

comes

and goes.

Each picture is the center of the film,

just as the sun is the center of our universe.

A cat? No, a sun.

A basket?

No, a sun.

An orange?

No, a sun.

A table? No, a sun.

The motion of pictures never coincides with that of words.

Click-clack.

Cinema carries on.

The miracle of motion goes on,

starts anew, other and differently.

This film is called "Day after Day"

and not "Night after Night".

During the day, I stare at things.

During the night, I dwell on words.

In the morning, I dictate them to she who wakes me up.

Effort.

Happiness.

Tenderness.

Helplessness.

Absence.

Presence.

Elsewhere.

Injustice. Absence. Politics. Terror.

Illusion.

Justice. Luck. Lies.

Truth. Pleasure. Oblivion.

Seasons.

Here on earth. Present.

Past.

Childhood.

Cinema.

Deception. Ending. Tolerance. Childhood.

Intolerance. Infinite.

Others. Temporary. Natural.

Curiosity. Multiplication.

Horror. Passion.

Ending. Goodbye. Child.

See you soon. Infinite.

Elsewhere. Temporary. Pleasure. Reading.

Injustice.

Politics.

Terror. Enjoyment. Illusion. Terror.

Justice. Happiness. Pleasure. Tenderness.

Helplessness.

Love. Woman. Seasons. Here on earth.

Others. Natural. Silence.

Tranquility. Anxiety.

Serenity.

Anxiety. Serenity.

The last words?

There is no ending.

Only black.

The night after the day.

After all these days.

Only black.

Black is a color as well.

But the dead are the ones to see it.

The only true color.

Colors don't tell the truth.

They lie for the sake of tenderness.

Seasons don't tell the truth.

The seasons of a life.

I live here,

in the midst of these colors,

waiting for the black.

There is the truth.

Enjoyment doesn't tell the truth.

It lies for the sake of pleasure.

I live here,

in the midst of this enjoyment.

What use have these books for me to photograph a rose?

Cinema doesn't tell the truth.

It lies for the sake of being natural.

It lies for the sake of helplessness.

I live here,

in the midst of these natural things,

in the midst of this helplessness.

Waiting for serenity.

Absence doesn't tell the truth.

It lies for the sake of tranquility.

I live here,

in the midst of this tranquility.

Waiting for presence.

Presence doesn't tell the truth.

It lies for the sake of multiplication.

Waiting for the farewell.

Each picture might be the last.

I'd like to die taking a second to last photograph.

Black is a color as well.

The only true color.

Unbreakable glass of the truth,

at the five-hundredth of a second,

several times a day,

for a whole year.

We could stop here.

Or go on.

Let's go on.

Truth doesn't tell the truth.

It lies for the sake of terror.

I live here, in the midst of this terror.

Waiting for the end.

One more picture, Mr. Executioner!

My film is not finished.

Time doesn't pass.

We pass through it.

This film is not a last will.

Only a journey in a year.

This film is not a last will.

Just a film about "less".

A film about "less".