Olivier Morel is a French and American scholar and filmmaker. He is the director of several feature-length nonfiction films and is the author of essays including one graphic novel with the artist and writer :fr:Maël |Maël. His academic work as well as his films highlight the importance of creation and the arts in the perception of historical events. He teaches at the department of Film, Television and Theatre, and the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures at the University of Notre Dame in the United States.
Biography
While creating radio documentaries and working as a community organizer, he pursued a master's and post-master's degree in social sciences at the University of Provence under the supervision of Bruno Etienne and :fr:Mustapha Khayati|Mustapha Khayati. He then studied at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris, France, where he attended Cornelius Castoriadis’s. seminars as well as those of Jacques Derrida who has had a significant influence on his work. At the Collège International de Philosophie he attended Hélène Cixous’s seminar and has devoted several scholarly papers to this writer, playwright and thinker. He defended his doctoral dissertation at the University of Paris 8 in 2011 under the direction of Bruno Clément and is currently appointed as an associate professor at the University of Notre Dame. After having coauthored several films he completed his first feature nonfiction film titled On the Bridge. In On the Bridge young female and male soldiers of the US military give account of the crimes perpetrated during the war in Iraq through the prism of the severe posttraumatic stress disorder that they endured,. The film was awarded the Second Jury Prize at the Baghdad International Film Festival in 2013. His third feature-length film explores Hélène Cixous’s poetic endeavors as well as her current activity as a “house playwright” of the Théâtre du Soleil, founded by Ariane Mnouchkine.
Filmography
On the Bridge, 97 minutes, Zadig Productions, ARTE Grand Format, 2011.
Profils 14-18 , TV5 Monde, in collaboration with Didier Pazery and Claude Vittiglio.
Books
Visages de la Grande Guerre, Calmann-Lévy, Paris, 1998.
Berlin Légendes ou la Mémoire des Décombres, Presses Universitaires de Vincennes, Paris, 2014.
Revenants, Futuropolis-Gallimard, drawings by Maël, Foreword by Marc Crépon, chair of the Philosophy Department of the École Normale Supérieure, 2013,; Die Rückkehrer, Carlsen Verlag 2014 ; Walking Wounded, NBM publishing, New York, 2015,.
Exhibits
Between Listening and Telling, Paris City Hall, January 25-March 12, 2005, filmed testimonies of Holocaust survivors, installation directed by Esther Shalev-Gerz, MK2-History, Mémorial de la Shoah, Paris City. The exhibit also took place in the Jeu de Paume, Paris, France, 2010 ; at the MCBA, Lausanne, Switzerland, 2012 ; at the Belkin Art Gallery, UBC, Vancouver, Canada, 2013 ; at La Galerie de l’UQAM, Montréal, Canada, 2014 ; at Wasserman Projects, Detroit, USA, 2016
Visages de la Grande Guerre, Douaumont Ossuary, permanent exhibit inaugurated on November 11, 2008.
Vestiges et Visages de la Grande Guerre, Great East Train Station, Paris, France, June 23-November 30, 2014.
