All the rushes, both sound and picture, which had not been included in the – nal version of Chronique d’un été, were painstakingly assembled and digitized in 2008. The documentary offers these nev- er-before-seen images intertwined with enlightening comments by the lm’s orig- inal participants, such as Edgar Morin, Régis Debray, Jean-Pierre Sergent, Mar- celine Loridan-Ivens and Nadine Ballot. These interviews, shot in 2010 – fty years after the original release of the lm – shed new light on a work which has greatly contributed to French cinema his- tory.

Chronique d’un été was a bold prototype. Its undulating and determined study of a reality up until then unexplored, captured raw, whatever the venue, thanks to the lightweight Coutant-Mathot camera and the Nagra audio recorder.
A cornerstone of cinéma vérité, was not Chronique d’un été also the rst making- of, both testimony and raw material, the substance itself of the lm that takes shape before our eyes?
Un été + 50 is thus a making-of of the making-of, chronicle of a truth squared. Florence Dauman