Literature Meeting

Céline Zufferey on the trail of a forgotten pioneer

4 reading minutes

written by Sandrine Rovere · July 18, 2023 · 0 comment

Céline Zufferey on the trail of a forgotten pioneer

Swiss writer Céline Zufferey © Francesca Mantovani / Gallimard

She caused a sensation when her first novel was published by Gallimard at the age of just 25. Here we meet Valais-born Céline Zufferey, who this spring published her second opus, also in Paris.

For Céline Zufferey, value waits for the passing of time. At the age of 32, Valais-born Céline Zufferey published this spring Nitrate, his second novel. This book plunges us into the early history of cinema. As with his first book Saving the furniture in 2017, Nitrate was published in Gallimard's prestigious «Collection Blanche», alongside such French literary monsters as Nobel Prize winners Clézio and Modiano.

We meet the artist in the kitchen of her family home in Granges, near Sierre. Now based in Lyon, the writer is taking advantage of a visit to Switzerland for the Festival international de littérature de Loèche-les-Bains to see her parents. And although a meeting with a journalist interferes with this intimate moment, she doesn't seem to mind.

It has to be said that Céline Zufferey loves talking about her books. «We're very much alone when we write. And so we want to share our work with others, and that happens at the time of release,» she explains, sipping her cup of tea. The pleasure of meeting readers is all the greater now that several years have passed since the release of Saving the furniture.«For me, each novel is my last. When I finish writing a novel, I never know if I'll manage to write another,» notes Céline Zufferey. «It took me a long time to find a subject that was close to my heart and that I felt was worth telling».

A forgotten pioneer

A subject worth talking about, it's the life of the first female director in the history of cinema, Alice Guy. A woman who did everything in her time: she made hundreds of films, was a director at Gaumont, founded her own production company in the USA... before losing everything. She spent years trying to recover her works, without much success. Then she sank almost completely into oblivion. «She was a pioneer and pioneers are often forgotten because they started too early and stopped too early too,» laments Céline Zufferey. The author chose her title in reference to the cellulose nitrate that made up the first cinema films.

Like her character Constance, the author became so passionate about Alice Guy that she spent a year researching her, meeting historians and collectors and visiting film reserves such as those at the CNC, the French National Center for Cinema and Moving Images. «When you're a writer, you have a kind of carte blanche. You can go up to people and say, “I'm interested in what you're doing, can you tell me about it?” In terms of inspiration, it was really very rich.»

The result is a treasure hunt for a missing Alice Guy film. But like a detective story, the interest of this book doesn't really lie in the outcome of this investigation. «When I came to the end of my year's research into the history of cinema and Alice Guy, I told myself that the research itself was enough. Everything I'd done already provided enough material for this novel», explains the author.

Writing in complete freedom

The thirty-something is delighted to have been given so much freedom by her publisher. Gallimard never made her feel the urgency to publish this second book. Nor, she says, did she ever feel any personal pressure to produce a sequel to her acclaimed first novel. «I had shown myself that I was capable of writing a novel. I had shown myself that I was capable of going all the way. I was published. All that was left was to keep writing.

Writing, yes, but without a ready-made recipe. For Céline Zufferey bursts out laughing when asked about her early success. A graduate of the Swiss Literary Institute in Biel/Bienne, the Valais native considers herself lucky to have met the right people at the right time thanks to her studies. She also stresses the need to bounce back from setbacks. «You have to move on and tell yourself that it's not the end of the world and that you'll find another way,» she says.

With this second novel in her pocket, Céline Zufferey admits she hasn't yet thought about the future and what it holds for her. «Writing is a bit like jumping into a bottomless pit. The leap isn't very reassuring. Right now, I'm still standing on the edge and wondering whether I'm going to jump or not,» she concludes with a smile.

Write to the author: sandrine.rovere@leregardlibre.com