A top musician, a member of the Groupe Octobre, a fantasist, a stage performer, a film actor, a mountaineer and a skier, Maurice Baquet was always on the move, and his life revolved around two common threads: the cello and the mountain.
In fact, he once described himself as a “cellist-skier”, “all alone” in this category, prompting world champion skier James Couttet to say: “Of all the skiers I know, he’s the best cellist”; echoing this, André Navarra, Professor at the Conservatoire National Supérieur, went one better: “Of all the cellists I know, he’s the best skier”.
Throughout his varied yet coherent career, Baquet has contributed to the joyful, artistic image of the mountains. To talk about Maurice and all his adventures, who better than his alter-ego: Cérébos, the faithful cello that never left his side. From Paris to Chamonix, from theater stages to granite slabs and snowy slopes, let’s follow Cérébos, cross the century and, above all… smile!
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A child of the mountains, Gilles grew up facing Mont Blanc and now lives between Grenoble and Chamonix. He turned to journalism, creating and developing mountain magazines (Montagnes Magazine, Vertical, Ski Français). At the same time, he worked as a consultant for television (France Télévision, TF1) and regularly collaborated with the press (Libération, Le Monde). He was also a member of the team which, from its creation in 1985, hosted the magazine Montagne on FR3, for which he was for a time editor-in-chief and for which he made several documentaries, all of which won awards at festivals. After spending four years in Paris as deputy editor-in-chief of L’Équipe Magazine, he turned his attention to directing documentaries, five of which were produced by Seven Doc. In 2009, in addition to his director’s hat, he took on the role of director of the Collection Montagne, a book + DVD series devoted to the so-called “conquerors of the useless”, launched in 2009 by Seven Doc.
Director:
Gilles Chappaz
Production:
France
Year:
2023
Duration:
54 min
Screening:
Saturday, S2, 16:10-17:10
