Marguerite Duras
Date of birth: 1914-04-04
Place of birth: Gia Định, Vietnam
Known for: Directing
Also known as: Marguerite Donnadieu, 마르그리트 뒤라스, 마르그리트 뒤라, 마가렛 뒤라스, 玛格丽特·杜拉斯
Biography
Marguerite Germaine Marie Donnadieu (4 April 1914 – 3 March 1996), known as Marguerite Duras, was a French novelist, playwright, screenwriter, essayist, and experimental filmmaker. Her script for the film Hiroshima mon amour (1959) earned her a nomination for Best Original Screenplay at the Academy Awards. Duras was born Marguerite Donnadieu on 4 April 1914, in Gia Định, Cochinchina, French Indochina (now Vietnam). Her parents, Marie (née Legrand, 1877–1956) and Henri Donnadieu (1872–1921), were teachers from France who likely had met at Gia Định High School. They both had previous marriages. Marguerite had two brothers: Pierre, the older, and the younger Paul. Duras' father fell ill and he returned to France, where he died in 1921, when Duras was seven years old. Between 1922 and 1924, the family lived in France while her mother was on administrative leave. They then moved back to French Indochina when she was posted to Phnom Penh followed by Vĩnh Long and Sa Đéc. The family struggled financially, and her mother made a bad investment in an isolated property and area of rice farmland in Prey Nob, a story which was fictionalized in Un barrage contre le Pacifique (The Sea Wall). In 1931, when she was 17, Duras and her family moved to France where she successfully passed the first part of the baccalaureate with the choice of Vietnamese as a foreign language, as she spoke it fluently. Duras returned to Saigon in late 1932 where her mother found a teaching post. There, Marguerite continued her education at the Lycée Chasseloup-Laubat and completed the second part of the baccalaureate, specializing in philosophy. In autumn 1933, Duras moved to Paris, graduating with a degree in public law in 1936. At the same time, she took classes in mathematics. She continued her education, earning a diplôme d'études supérieures (DES) in public law and, later, in political economy. After finishing her studies in 1937, she found employment with the French government at the Ministry of the Colonies. In 1939, she married the writer Robert Antelme, whom she had met during her studies. During World War II, from 1942 to 1944, Duras worked for the Vichy government in an office that allocated paper quotas to publishers and in the process operated a de facto book-censorship system. She then became an active member of the PCF (the French Communist Party) and a member of the French Resistance as a part of a small group that also included François Mitterrand, who later became President of France and remained a lifelong friend of hers. Duras' husband, Antelme, was deported to Buchenwald in 1944 for his involvement in the Resistance, and barely survived the experience (weighing on his release, according to Duras, just 38 kg, or 84 pounds). She nursed him back to health, but they divorced once he recovered. In 1943, when publishing her first novel, she began to use the surname Duras, after the town that her father came from, Duras, Lot-et-Garonne. In 1950, her mother returned to France from Indochina, wealthy from property investments and from the boarding school she had run. ... Source: Article "Marguerite Duras" from Wikipedia in English, licensed under CC-BY-SA.
Movie Credits
Nathalie Granger
1973-09-27
With little or no embellishment, filmmaker Marguerite Duras offers a simple, often wordless chronicl
The Lorry
1977-05-27
In this most talky and personal of films, director Marguerite Duras and actor Gerard Depardieu do an
Marguerite Duras, l'écriture et la vie
2021-02-19
25 years ago, Marguerite Duras passed away at the age of 81. At the evocation of this name, one spon
Marguerite Duras - Écrire
1993-01-01
A long interview between Marguerite Duras and Benoît Jacquot on the subject of writing and of solitu
The Marguerite Duras Century
Marguerite Duras still has much to tell us about her words and about her silences. In this film, her
Un metteur en ordre: Robert Bresson
1966-05-11
A documentary, originally produced in 1966 for the French TV series "Pour le plaisir," about Robert
Cygne I
1976-07-02
Stages a double persona on a music of Monteverdi (Ariadne’s lamento interpreted by Janet Baker).
Les Mains négatives
1978-01-01
Duras narrates a short story while the camera travels through the streets of Paris with short interl
Woman of the Ganges
1974-04-03
A man returns to the place he once lived a passionate love affair with a woman who is now dead. So
Son nom de Venise dans Calcutta désert
1976-06-02
The full soundtrack to Marguerite Duras' 1975 film India Song, about a French ambassador's wife in 1
Marguerite Duras: Worn Out with Desire . . . to Write
1985-01-01
She was the sort of woman who spared neither herself nor others—and arguably qualifies as 20th-centu
Marguerite Duras
1994-02-06
Marguerite Duras.is interviewed twice, first in 1984 and then in 1993, on her life and work as a wri
Little Girl Blue
2023-11-01
In 2016, French writer and photographer Carole Achache took her own life. After Carole's death, her
Aurélia Steiner (Vancouver)
1979-01-01
Based on the letters of a fictitious poetess to her lover. Duras reads extracts from the letters, ab
Duras and Cinema
2014-07-03
Documentary on famous writer Marguerite Duras and her paradoxical relation to the seventh art by her
Duras Shoots
1981-01-01
A documentary about filmmaker Marguerite Duras.
La TV des 70's : Quand Giscard était président
2022-01-07
In May 1974, Valéry Giscard d'Estaing became President of the Republic and wanted to bring about a n
Savannah Bay c’est toi
1984-01-01
One Minute for One Image
1983-01-31
TV series directed by Varda in which she gives thoughts to her favorite images and why she is drawn
The Death of the Young English Aviator
1993-01-01
Marguerite Duras tells the story of the death of a young English aviator in a French village.
Écrire
1994-08-04
When Duras saw 'La mort du jeune aviateur anglais', she told Benoît Jacquot that the film was about
Les enfants et Noël
1965-11-25
Reflections (in voice-over) by Marguerite DURAS on toys "the most beautiful are those you see behind
Marguerite as She Was
2003-04-04
On June 3, 1991, Marguerite Duras gave me her last published work, "The North China Lover", autograp
India Song
1975-06-04
Anne-Marie Stretter, the wife of a French diplomat in 1930s India, takes many lovers to relieve the
The Colour of Words
1984-06-12
This afterword to India Song (Duras' celebrated 1975 film) is organized in several parts. It begins
L’homme atlantique
1981-11-25
When everything was ready for my death, I began to write of what I know precisely, which you’ve neve
Le Navire Night
1979-03-21
Le Navire Night is a story of love and desire sustained and nourished through sound waves. The film’
Agatha and the Limitless Readings
1981-10-07
A man and his sister meet at a seaside village to discuss their relationship.
Les vendredis d'Apostrophes
2015-11-06
Hours and historical meetings, Pierre Assouline has composed an anthology of the best extracts prese
L'affaire Matzneff
2020-01-05
About the Gabriel Matzneff affair and pedophilia in French culture and society from the 1950s to the
Duras/Godard
1987-12-02
On December 2, 1987, the filmmaker visited the novelist at her home in Paris. This meeting gave rise
Hiroshima: The Time of Return
2005-02-28
Luc Lagier puts Alain Resnais' film back in its historical context and in the filmmaker's biography.
Dim Dam Dom: Marguerite Duras and Little François
1965-04-30
Broadcast once a month, Dim Dam Dom was a TV variety show on the second channel of French public tel
La Dame des Yvelines
1984-07-01
Conversation between a woman (Duras) and a man (D. Noguez) about a woman and a man.
Baxter, Vera Baxter
1977-06-08
In an empty villa, Vera Baxter sits and contemplates her life, as she recounts to a woman who was dr
Jeanne Moreau: Free Spirit
2018-04-02
An account of the life of actress Jeanne Moreau (1928-2017), a true icon of the New Wave and one of
Pornotropic
2020-09-30
When French writer Marguerite Duras (1914-96) published her novel The Sea Wall in 1950, she came ver
The Places of Marguerite Duras
1976-05-03
Her whole childhood, Marguerite Duras spent her time moving. Her house in Neauphle-le-Château is the
Pop Age
1966-01-01
Report on the young people of the yéyé period and pop music. Jerk at the Palladium, Beatles, press c
Delphine and Carole
2020-01-14
In the 70s, actress Delphine Seyrig and director Carole Roussopoulos, both militant feminists, were
Marguerite Duras and Stripper Lolo Pigalle
1965-10-28
In this episode of Dim Dam Dom, Duras interviews the stripper Lolo Pigalle. A clip of Lolo dancing i
Marguerite Duras interviews Jeanne Moreau
1965-07-28
Duras interviews an exhausted Jeanne Moreau, addressing her friend as vous, despite the fact "the tw
Marguerite Duras in the Lions' Den
1966-02-25
Duras, ever the challenging interviewer, forensically questions a Parisian zookeeper regarding the h
Marguerite Duras and the Prison Governess
1967-11-12
During this strange and confrontational interview, Duras takes on France’s only female prison warden
Marguerite Duras and the '68ers
1968-03-10
Here Duras assumes a more distant role, less an interviewer than an invested documentarian. Her ques
Mitterrand, président culturel
2021-05-12
On the occasion of the fourty years anniversary of François Mitterand's election, a look back to the
Work and Words
1984-01-01
In this interview with Dominique Noguez, Marguerite Duras talks successively about each of her four
Mulher a Mulher: Interview with Marguerite Duras by Yann Lemée
1980-06-15
‘Mulher a Mulher’ is a Portuguese TV show dedicated to the condition of women that aims to demystify
Gaumont-Palace
1976-03-25
From the deserted halls and corridors of the Gaumont-Palace cinema in Paris, memories of the great f
Césarée
1978-08-27
On images of the Tuileries Gardens, Marguerite Duras recalls Césarée, an ancient destroyed city.