Franck Venaille
Writer · 1936 – 2018 · Paris, France
The poet François (known as Franck) Venaille was born in the working-class 11th arrondissement of Paris. He received a Catholic upbringing and joined the Communist Party at a very young age following his military service in Algeria. Papiers d'identité, his first book published in 1966, looks back on this period, which he would also explore in Hourra les morts! (Obsidiane, 2003) and in L'Enfant rouge, published by Mercure de France shortly after his death in 2018.
Movies1
Movie7.0DocumentaryIn the 1980s, writer, poet, radio personality and football enthusiast Franck Venaille is diagnosed with Parkinson's disease. He decides to travel the length of the Scheldt river, to dip his hands in its source, and brings back the long epic poem La Descente de l'Escaut. Today, the disease has progressed, but Venaille still spends much of his time working in the study where he wrote the text. Je me suis en marche is both a road movie weaving together the poem, Venaille now and during his journey, and a documentary adaptation of the epic odyssey of a sick man retracing a river across 450 kilometres.