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Based on the twofold observation that sociologists run the risk of imposing issues and themes on their interviewees that are sometimes foreign to them, and that interviewees’ ability to speak about work is more or less impeded in a number of circumstances, Pascal Cesaro (filmmaker) and Pierre Fournier (sociologist) propose to conduct surveys using video-elicitation. The interview they give here shows the heuristic potential of the approach, while also exposing the difficulties of the undertaking and its pitfalls. They go into detail about their practice and the reasons for the choices it entailed, such as selecting the sequences to be debated or favoring fiction as the genre of images to be presented to the interviewees. The result is a sociological documentary, both rigorous and stimulating to watch, from which they have subsequently produced an interactive documentary, visible on the web, to explain their approach.

Cette série de photographies a été réalisée par un ouvrier-photographe du port pétrolier de Fos sur mer (Sud de la France). Elle dit autrement que par les mots la nature et les conditions de travail de ces ouvriers qui font entrer le pétrole en Europe en déchargeant les tankers : tout est à la démesure de ces bateaux de plusieurs dizaines de milliers de tonnes déchargeant un produit visqueux qui adhère aux vêtements et à la peau par tous les temps... images à la sensibilité inconnue, faite de complicité et de distanciation. Une manière différente d’aborder le travail qui réinvestit les émotions.

The paper scrutinises the actions that the authors took as sociologist film-makers responsible for producing “Dreams on line” (Rêves de chaîne), a sociological documentary made in the early 2000s in a California automotive plant run by a Toyota and General Motors joint-venture.It is a reflective article examining each of the film’s main production phases, from pre-filming preparations through the final edits. Questions pertain to the specificity of a sociological approach to film-making ; the borrowing of cinematographic language ; relations with cinematic professionals ; the imbuing of images and sounds with sociological meaning ; and the significance of the final edit.The article looks at the challenges that film-makers face, as well as the solutions they find throughout the long process of making a documentary. It also asks to what extent the cinematographic approach can enhance scientific sociological production. The ultimate purpose is to further develop the sociology of film by scrutinising the discipline’s ability to create meaning and add to the visibility of the words, practices, bodies and gestures of the individuals being subjected to investigation

The big question here is how a person facing imminent retirement might pass on their know-how and pivot to the next stage of life. In her documentary “My mother's goats”, Sophie Audier mixes social and personal reflections on an economic, political and local level. The film shows the exact moment when Sophie’s mother relinquished her farm and herd, as well as the effects that European regulations had on this experience, embodied in the young woman who would subsequently take over the activity. The interview with Sophie shows how important a detailed preparation and precise anticipation of the director's perspective to the quality of a documentary. Albeit not a new concept, it is a principle that has become increasingly difficult to maintain at a time when film-makers are under greater pressure due to shorter shooting schedules and tighter editing deadlines. To that extent, the documentary is also an opportunity for Sophie to share questions about the editing process and director-editor relationship.

This photographic notebook features professional and amateur photographs - commented by sociologists and non-sociologists alike – in a rigorous bid to organise the memories and realities of the social turbulence that France witnessed in May and June 1968. The upheavals experienced during these months went beyond Paris to affect all different sectors and parts of society, sometimes in forms and pursuing a logic characterised by a surprising amount of collective solidarity. The notebook does not claim to be exhaustive but offers a partial demonstration of how 50 years on photography and sociology help account for one of the 20th century’s most important events.

After acquainting themselves with Nicolas Frize, a contemporary music composer working out of an artist’s residence, the two filmmakers use this setting to make a film about industrial employment in PSA Peugeot-Citroën’s Saint-Ouen stamping plant near Paris. They get the workers to say how they really feel about their work and the images that are commonly associated with it. These scenes are then mixed with others showing the composer recording music in the factory; concert rehearsals (in which the workers also participate); and factory workshops. The combination of these scenes stages a dialogue between music and industrial labour, without any attempt being made to soften the reality or difficulties of the work in question. The interviews featured in this movie will be of particular interest to film sociologists since they highlight the kinds of problems that cinematographers face when making a movie about work—while also suggesting ways to overcome these obstacles.

Manuela Frésil, a filmmaker and trained philosopher, has created here a vehicle for studying slaughterhouse workers’ attitude to death. She uses her camera to follow meat cutting and packaging operations and reveal employees’ working conditions. By filming different sites, she reconstructs generic (or in her words, universal) situations attesting to the physical strenuousness of this kind of work – while offering workers an unprecedented opportunity to speak their minds.Two sociologists discuss with the director the filming choices she has made in trying to overcome obstacles that make it so difficult to show workers in a real slaughterhouse environment. The focus is on what this means for them - namely that they will be so worn down physically that they will have to finish their careers well before the official retirement age. Not to forget more recent recruits’ fear of losing their jobs due to the ever-increasing productivity demands resulting in certain companies leaving France for Eastern Europe.

This article defines the main contours of the filmic sociology by applying them to the world of work. As tools of investigation and expression, cameras (and cinema as a whole) require a mastery of cinematographic writing in order that sociological documentaries might exist. Based on two of these productions – one involving blue collar work and the other managerial work – the author demonstrates the difference between what cinematographic expression and the printed word communicate. The co-production of knowledge between the director of a film and the characters therein is depicted as one of the main challenges facing the filmic sociology, particularly where this entails interviews with new uses that sociologists have yet to invent. Otherwise, the article deals with the « distanciation » and point of view issues that preoccupy sociology in general but are particularly acute here. Cameras offer an indirect way of showing the perspective with which a filmmaker views society, with the editing process fine-tuning whatever choices have been made. The fourteen proposals featured in the appendix indicate what directions the filmic sociology might take.

The publication of a comic strip on the theme of work in philosophy is an opportunity to analyze with the author and illustrator of this work how the philosophical concept of Work can be put into a comic strip, and how the latter is likely to enable a different and complementary appropriation of philosophical concepts. These interviews are also an opportunity to study the collaborative work and task-sharing arrangements between authors and illustrators, as well as the working conditions and remuneration of a comic strip that is part of an after-school collection published by two publishers, Belin and la Boîte à Bulles.