Composed of eight interlinked plateaus, Facs of Life is a film occupying a liminal territory between documentary, fiction, essay and video art, which attempts to map molecular trajectories of life and thought beginning from a series of encounters: with the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze; with video footage of Deleuze’s courses at Vincennes (1975-76); with several of the students who attended the seminar and who appear in these images; with the woods of Vincennes where the university buildings (pulled down in 1980) once stood; with students of the new university at St. Denis and with the phantoms of revolution, both cinematic and political, that continue to haunt collective desire.

The eight plateaus each fall under a key concept-word or refrain that delineates the territory of each student’s relationship to Deleuze’s thought (their angle of approach) and the nature of the filmmakers’ encounter with them. The plateaus, while sketching a narrative of the film’s making, are designed to fold and unfold upon each other in a series of non-linear, multiple assemblages.