mardi, août 28, 2007

Georges2Ondioline

Part of my Jean-Jacques Perrey's documentary is about Georges Jenny, the man he worked for in the fifties. We went together with Jean-Jacques to the massif de la Grande Chartreuse near Grenoble and stayed two days in a small hôtel-restaurant, very close to the monastery where this film was shot. We continued our Jenny pilgrimage by visiting the sanatorium in Saint Hilaire du Touvet, where he invented his synthesizer, the Ondioline in 1938. The Ondioline was Perrey's trade mark in France and America. It was made by disabled persons in protected ateliers. Jenny was doing a cure and asked for a calm room for completing his research; the director offered him... the morgue. Flirting with death was a specificity of this prehistorical electronic instrument. During our drive to Saint Hilaire du Touvet, Jean-Jacques told me that he was doing his electronic Ondioline show with the young Jacques Brel in the fifties, since they shared the same manager. Brel and him were too poor and used to have dinner at the very famous restaurant La Coupole, an expensive one. But what they asked for dinner was: radis & beurre and a lot of bread. I regret I couldn't film while driving because a lot of interesting anecdotes like this would have been nice to use. But many of them were too private for a public project and will remain secret, they'll be my personal bonus.