Just Don’t Think I’ll Scream (Ne croyez surtout pas que je hurle), dir. Frank Beauvais, France 2019, 75 min., French with English subtitles
‘I don't see the outside world. I try to think of it through the films that I see day and night.’
When a break-up left Frank Beauvais with no sense of self, the French director found himself using films to feed and contradict his melancholy, reconstituting his character through images created by others. Compiling fleeting excerpts from more than 400 films Beauvais watched over just four months, overlaid with an often visceral commentary, Just Don’t Think I’ll Scream is at once a personal diary, a reflection on the world and a treaty on the history of cinema.
There isn’t a single original shot in Just Don't Think I'll Scream – and yet Beauvais becomes the certified author of each one, repositioning and reinventing them in a frantic and deeply personal act of reappropriation.