Debussy at the beach

The scrupulous investigation by Rémy Campos, conducted on the basis of a photograph kept in a family album, invites us to jump headlong into the setting of the beach of Houlgate, where we find the composer Claude Debussy and his family, who travelled to the resort - a thermal spa town popular among representatives of high society - in August 1911. The study of this image and of the snapshots taken by amateur photographers, including Jacques-Henri Lartigue, along with dozens of postcards, allow us to reveal the customs and practices of a world that very much had its own codes, but also the more intimate, almost banal part of the life of an artist, in an era when the taking of images without their subjects’ knowledge was already common practice.

"Debussy à la plage", a book by Rémy Campos published by Gallimard

An exhibition at the Musée d'Archéologie nationale in Saint-Germain-en-Laye

Production: Haute école de musique de Genève

With the voice of Denis Podalydès, member of the Comédie Française

Music: Claude Debussy, "Le Martyre de Saint-Sébastien", Orchestra of the Haute école de Musique de Genève and the Hochschule Musik und Theater de Zurich, conducted by Stefan Asbury (2005).

Director: Benoit Martin - Année Zéro
Cinematography: Guillaume Foresti
Sound: Francis Bernard and Vincent Rouffiac