Prénoms

A film of rules whose narrative varies, multiplies and expands into a novel of nomadic world knowledge. Nurith Aviv visits her friends, she arrives with flowers in her hand, finds the appropriate framing and listens. She speaks for Agnès V., whose actual name was Arlette. All the others speak themselves and soon get talking, about nothing less than the story of their first names. Chowra, Gulya, Hind, etc., thirteen in number, thirteen miniatures from A for Agnès Varda to Z for Zeynep Jouvenaux. They are colleagues from the film industry (filmmakers like herself, or stagehands), psychoanalysts, literature professors, engineers. Every meaning produced here is somehow connected to their first names. How fascinatingly simple this film seems and yet what gifts one receives while listening. Like herself, Nurith’s friends regard their names as messages, as a point of connection to their family and cultural backgrounds and as a trace of the desires and yearnings of those who brought them into the world. In her cinematic oeuvre, Nurith Aviv taps into signs, letters, words, languages. She herself also speaks many, including that of the camera. What a gift – and piece of luck. (Christiane Büchner, Barbara Wurm)

Nurith Aviv has made around 20 documentaries. She is mainly interested in exploring questions of language. Retrospectives of her work have been held at Jeu de Paume, Centre Pompidou, Forum des Images, in New York and Geneva. She is the first woman cinematographer in France officially recognised by the CNC and her filmography as DOP includes films by Agnès Varda, Amos Gitaï, René Allio, and Jacques Doillon. She is the subject of Zoher Behrendt’s film Nurith Aviv, Woman with a Camera. Nurith Aviv: Filmer la parole (Éditions Exils, 2023) collects texts on her films by around 40 authors.

Director Nurith Aviv. Screenplay Nurith Aviv. Cinematography Nurith Aviv. Editing Hippolyte Saura, Nurith Aviv. Producers Serge Lalou, Sophie Cabon. Production company Les Films d'Ici (Paris, France). With Chowra Makaremi, Edouard Rosenblatt, Gulya Mirzoeva, Hind Meddeb, Judith Guy, Marc-Alain Ouaknin, Nathalie Bély, Rim Bouhedda, Sarah Lawan Gana, Tewfik Allal, Yue Zhuo, Zeynep Jouvenaux.

Films: 1988: Kafr Qar’a, Israël (documentary). 1992: La tribu européene / The European Tribe (documentary). 1998: Makom Avoda / A Place, A Work (documentary). 2000: Circoncision / Circumcision (documentary). 2001: Allenby, Passage (short documentary). 2002: Vaters Land / Loss (short documentary). 2004: D’une langue à l’autre / From Language to Language (documentary), L’alphabet de Bruly Bouabré / The Alphabet of Bruly Bouabré (short documentary). 2008: Langue sacrée, langue parlée / Sacred Language, Spoken Language (documentary). 2011: Traduire / Translating (documentary). 2013: Annonces / Announcements (documentary). 2015: Poétique du cerveau / Poetics of the Brain (documentary). 2017: Signer en langues / Signing in Languages (short documentary). 2018: Signer / Signing (documentary). 2020: Yiddish (documentary). 2022: Des mots qui restent / Words That Remain (documentary). 2024: Lettre errante / Wandering Letter (documentary). 2025: Son portrait, mon portrait / Her Portrait, My Portrait (short documentary). 2026: Prénoms / Given Names.