Prénoms I Given Names

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.