Laura Waddington: The Clandestine Camera

By Mathilde Blottière et Laurent Rigoulet

Translated from the French

At thirty-five years old, this talented English filmmaker defies codes and conventions to create different images—that are sensitive and personal. Exemplifying a movement that draws its creativity from the fusing of disciplines, Border, her latest short film produced in France, is competing this year at Clermont Ferrand. Could this artistic current be gaining ground in short film?

Worlds apart from the documentaries that television news has accustomed us to, Border sets out on in search of the refugees of Sangatte, blending formal sophistication with raw information. In 2001 and 2002, using a small mini DV camera, Laura Waddington filmed the clandestine migrants at night, wandering through the fields and roads surrounding he camp. From this risk-filled shoot, with its extreme technical constraints, she brought back images captured on the run—fragile, distorted, grainy.

Initially, video was a way for her to overcome practical difficulties: “When I was living in New York, I met electronic musicians who were making and distributing music out of their apartments. I felt that cinema would eventually move in the same direction and that with a small camera, even if I couldn’t find production funds, I’d always be able to keep shooting.” With video, she says she wanted to “unlearn” the reflexes that she had acquired while shooting film. By recording “without using (her) eyes” as she did in Zone, filmed in 1995 on a transatlantic ship with a video camera sewn into her jacket.

Two years later, she continued her work of exploration with The Lost Days, the story of a globe-trotting young woman, who sends video letters to a friend in New York. In fact, using the internet, the filmmaker contacted fifteen people in different countries and asked them to film their cities as if they were her protagonist.

Laura Waddington does not believe in an objective reality and prefers to present a partial and incomplete vision “like a sort of notebook.” Her experimental forays on the porous borders of documentary and fiction provoke the viewer by prompting them to question the veracity of the narrative. “I’ve always considered short film to be a valid form in itself and not, as seems to often be the case in France, a calling card for feature film making.”

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