They set themselves on fire to be heard. On December 17, 2013, the direction of New Writings of France Télévisions and HonkyTonk Films proposed "Le Grand Incendie". This webdocumentary allowed the immolation to be taken out of the simple news item to allow it to clarify its social dimension.
The choices
The initial idea was to make a documentary on burn victims. Inspired by a phrase of the surgeon Maurice Mimoun: " Doesn't just burn anyone ", Samuel Bollendorff and Olivia Colo, the two directors, had begun research on this subject.
A first case of immolation passed before their eyes, then a second, a third... After setting up an alert system, the latter revealed the disastrous statistic of an immolation every two weeks between 2011 and 2013.
In order to propose something other than the shameless and trashy immediacy of the news item, which can be described as horrifying and violent, the two authors have chosen a fragmented white presentation of a few snapshots by Samuel Bollendorff. Against this pure background, two lines of sound to carry two words: that of the witnesses, relatives or actors of this moment of life and that of the communication of the big bosses or managers of the companies involved, politicians or the media in a more general way. The image is, depending on the choice of the spectator, either entirely visible or translucent, more like a podcast that is not said, and where one can move from one line to the other to try to understand this ultimate gesture: but what could have provoked it?
Why the immolation by fire?
According to Xavier Pommereau, a psychiatrist interviewed by Sud-Ouest, suicide by immolation is a plural act.
· it is given to be seen: public, it denounces or claims a precise thing,
· It causes horrible suffering,
· This suffering is a sacrificial offering to an ideological or psychological cause.
· The place then becomes highly symbolic of the thing denounced.
An active and tragic way of saying: "You deny my existence so I don't have to be anymore" or "dying by fire is less difficult than living in hell".
Other immolations in History
Self-immolation by fire has long been practiced in some cultures, particularly by Buddhist monks from medieval times to the present day to denounce oppression or persecution.
Immolations by fire have helped to raise awareness and sometimes change the world like the one of Jan Palach in August 1969.
This history student chose to set himself on fire in Wenceslas Square in Prague to protest the Soviet invasion of his country, Czechoslovakia.
More recently, on December 17, 2010, Mohamed Bouazizi, a young unemployed Tunisian graduate whose police had seized the fruit and vegetable stall that was his only chance to feed his mother and sisters, also set himself on fire in front of the prefecture. This immolation was at the origin of the riots that led to the Tunisian revolution.
Finally, on Friday, November 8, 2019, student Anas K. from Saint Etienne, sprinkled himself with gasoline before setting himself on fire in front of a building in the Crous de Lyon. He wanted to denounce his own precariousness as well as the precariousness of the majority of students.
Le Grand Incendie was awarded the RFI-France24 2014 Gold Visa for the best web documentary at the Perpignan photojournalism festival in 2014.
