Of Great Events and Ordinary People 1980 Directed by Raúl Ruiz De grands événements et des gens ordinaires

In 1978, Ruiz was commissioned to make a television documentary about the French elections from the viewpoint of a Chilean exile in Paris’ eleventh arrondissement. But, contrary to the producers’ expectation, the Left lost. Ruiz seized on this anti-climax to make a documentary about nothing except itself – a film whose central subject is forever lost in digression and ‘dispersal’, harking back to his Chilean experiments of the ‘60s. Its political content is deliberately left negligible: it’s hard to tell at the end who did actually win the election, let alone why.

Country France
Production Country France
Language French
Spoken Language French
Gnere Documentary
Production Company INA
Release Date 24 February 1980
65 mins