In order to respond to the request of the National Resistance Museum of Champigny-sur-Marne, the Citizenship-Youth Association (93) and the CERCIL (Center for Studies and Research on Internment Camps in the Loiret) , I designed and imagined a one-voice reading of the works and words of Primo Levi. This reading is chronological, from his birth in 1919 to his death in 1987, the reader situating between each text read, the historical context of the time and thePrimo Levi's personal situation.

Our objective is to outline by the choice of texts, not only a silhouette of the man but also to make people want to read Primo Levi, all of Primo Levi... We can bear witness to his century without necessarily being a very great writer: this is not the case with Primo Levi. With him, lucidity, intellectual honesty and a constant happiness to write are combined: the -absolute- need to write stems from the concentration camp experience (He writesIf it's a manupon his return from Auschwitz), then persisted, diversified, tackled all genres, the essay, the story, the novel, the fantastic tale, the poem, and all subjects, in a refusal to specialize and a desire to see science and literature reconciled… (Primo Levi was also a chemist…) with always, as “landscape”,the memory of the camp, and the constant need for bear witness, analyze; need which leads, 40 years later, to his ultimate reflection, recorded inCastaways and survivors.

Éric Cénat, director and actor