Inland from the chalk plateau of Pays de Caux, the rituals of smoking hives and honey extraction are documented by an apprentice beekeeper, and a schoolboy watches from his classroom window over fields of rapeseed blown about by a coastal zephyr.

“The title came to me from Samuel Beckett’s book on Proust, in which he recalls that a new form of advertising appeared post-war, one that not only imposes a product, but also the time of day it has to be consumed: “Midday, seven o’clock: time for a Berger.” I knew this advert but it was on rereading this passage that I realised how similar it was to the shot where I’m alone drinking a [glass of] Berger, with the label clearly visible, and where the church bells are striking seven o’clock. Berger pastis is, of course, completely associated with Jean [Lambert], with our get-togethers, our weekly aperitifs. L’Heure du Berger is the recreation of Maniquerville. They were both made at the same time. In addition to Jean’s insistent “return” to his house, as his ghost inviting me to make this film, it is perhaps the heaviness of shooting Maniquerville that led me to make this film using such a light and intuitive touch.”

A institutional documentary short made for the Committee for Studies and Care of People with Multiple Disabilities [CESAP] by Pierre Creton following disabled children during one summer.

“I met Jean Lambert one year after my arrival in Bénouville, in 1992...Before we met, I used to see his house, his farm, and wondered who could be living in such a mess, amidst such neglect. I had prowled around a lot before approaching him, for months. The day I decided to go and see him on the pretext of buying milk, I cycled from Bénouville with my empty milk bottles. On the way, the police stopped me to ask where I was going. What a coincidence! Jean Lambert gave me the milk, pointing out that there were other farms closer to where I lived. The most difficult step had been taken…I went back to have dinner with him once a week. I’d arrive around 7pm and leave around two or three in the morning, always on my bike, often drunk…Later, I suggested that we make a film. He found the idea amusing, even though he mistrusted cinema. ‘You’re wasting your time, poetry is the only good thing. He died in April, the year of the eclipse….I finished the film I’d begun with him, without him"

Sir/Madam The reconstruction works on the new site of Maniquerville’s Yvon Lamour Gerontology Centre are now completed. The residents will be moving to the new premises over two days: Monday 11 and Tuesday 12 October 2010. This is the note displayed at reception, and which I did not wish to reword. It conveyed the crude tone that I had taken out of Maniquerville and which, this time, I was ready to tackle head on. Who is this information addressing? The residents’ children? Who is this Sir, this Madam? Residents? Spectators? Spectators of a reality that concerns us all? I see Le Grand Cortège as different from Maniquerville, in its form: here, the camera is constantly moving, the colour, nostalgia rather than melancholy…

“At the same time as I was helping my new friends Yves Edouard and Patrick Hébert with the harvest of 1997, there appeared in Le Monde Diplomatique: “The Fourth World War Has Begun”, a geostrategic analysis by Sub-Commander Marcos. On reading this manifesto, the idea of the film came to me.”»

From his father, Pierre inherited a wood that he looks after and, in the middle of the wood, a cabin, his father’s old hunting lodge where Pierre now enjoys spending time alone with his dog.

A walker who crosses three regions: Vattetot-sur-mer in the Pays-de-Caux region, Saint-Firmin-des-Bois in the Gâtinais region, and Carrouge in Switzerland, drawing an imaginary geographical thread between the places where we live and the place where Gustave Roud spent time on his family farm in the Pays-de-Vaux region. This film was inspired by Gustave Roud’s text, whose title we have borrowed. Travelling through landscapes, looking closely at the tiny and changing forms of nature, meeting living beings – animals and people.