Claude and Annie Miller looked like kids in a candy store. Hand in hand, they strolled down Carr’s Hill Field and jumped with excitement as the drumline’s potent beat reverberated throughout Grounds.
“I’ve always loved marching bands, but they are not part of French culture,” says Claude Miller. “It’s an American thing.” He watches them on YouTube.
 Marching bands, perhaps the great symbol of the American dream to young Frenchmen. |
The French husband-and-wife duo is researching their next project, a documentary film that chronicles the life of a college marching band.
The backdrop of the film is not music per se, explains director Claude Miller, but rather a more personal look at the students’ involvement in this fall’s presidential elections. “Whatever happens in America in November is important for the world,” says Claude Miller. “It’s a very special moment in history and we want to ask students what they think.”
UVA’s Cavalier Marching Band is one of the two schools chosen to be featured in the film and was selected, says Claude, “because [it is] a good and serious band.”
Their affinity for Virginia was sparked by the founders and directors of Virginia Commonwealth University’s French Film Festival, Dr. Peter Kirkpatrick and Dr. Françoise Ravaux-Kirkpatrick, who invited the Millers and made Claude the honorary chair of last year’s events.
The crew plans to film UVA’s band and contrast it with Petersburg’s Virginia State University, a historically black college.
The couple got the idea of using students’ fanatic school spirit to depict a portrait of American youth and their involvement in politics about a year ago. They recognized the historical importance of these elections as they followed closely the primary season. “If Obama wins, it’s an event, a world event,” says Claude Miller.
The director, whose resumé reflects a concern for humanity’s social values, won a Cesar, France’s academy award, for Best Writing in 1982 for Garde á vue, a story about the human instinct to avenge a crime done to a child. He won the Cannes Jury Prize for La Classe de Neige—Class Trip in 1998. His most recent film is 2003’s La Petite Lili.
The director says he expects a mixed reaction from the French audience. “French youth will see [the movie] as a very exotic thing,” he says. “Maybe they’ll see it as the American dream.” He smiles thinking of when he was 20 and America inspired him to make movies. Nowadays, however, European youth are merely interested in the commercial aspect of the dream, he says. “It’s less about the dream and more about the music, rap and hip-hop.”
The Millers filmed at both schools in August and will be back at the end of October to get reactions around election night, November 4. They hope to have the film ready in time to present it to the Commission of next year’s Cannes Film Festival.
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