“Narration Makes Us Human”
May 11, 2007 – 7:07 am
The ability to tell stories about our selves and share experience is is what separates us from other creatures on the planet according to István Szabó, director of Mephisto, Sunshine and Being Julia.
Szabó was speaking at an EBU seminar on Storytelling in Lucerne where he was followed by Jean Claude Carrière, who wrote Belle de Jour and worked with Jacques Tati and Peter Brook as well as Buñuel. He expanded on the theme: “We are all actors and stories: that’s our blood and flesh: we’re made of stories.”
One of his stories was about Oliver Sachs, the psychiatrist who wrote “The Man Who Mistook His Wife For a Hat” which Carrière adapted for the theatre with Brook.
Asked what makes a person ‘normal’, Sachs replied: “What is a normal man? A man who can tell his story: who knows about his past, where he was born, his family. He knows where he is now and he knows that he has a future: he has projects. He knows that one day he will die. A normal man knows how to tell who he is.”
I was reminded of Carrière’s story this week while working with Hi8us on their Digi-Tales project. Hi8us, whose mission statement is ‘Inclusion Through Media’ have been providing marginalised individuals and groups across Europe with the means to tell their stories.