Time code

Person

Dialogue

00.00.03 – 00.00.07

Text

UK Film Council and Screen South present

00.00.08 – 00.00.19

Text

Timepiece

00.00.48 – 00.01.19

Phillippe Dufour

Watch making arrived here around 1750, and at this time people living here were very modest they were farmers, there was no industry at all. Little by little they organised themselves to produce some marvellous watches, very  complex watches. I’m always surprised to see what they did they had no calculator, no computer, but they did amazing watches

00.01.20 – 00.01.30

Vianney

My name is Vianney Halter, I’m a watch maker I work in Switzerland and I make the watch myself by hand

00.01.37 – 00.01.53

Vianney

In my watch I make a smaller representation of the universe, when you see the watch, you open a small window on the world.

00.02.00 – 00.02.11

Phillippe Dufour

We have to be very humble because in fact we take inspiration from what’s been done before you know

00.02. 15 – 00.02.36

Phillippe Dufour

My father worked all his life in a watch part factory, and my grandfather he worked until 75 as a watchmaker. One day he told me “you are my only watchmaker grandson, so I want to give you my tools”. Some of his tools I still you it you know  

00.02.45 – 00.03.17

Phillippe Dufour

If you want a real accurate watch, buy a quartz watch because a mechanical watch can not beat a quartz watch, we have to be very clear about that. A mechanical watch nicely made will last I will say forever if it is a overhauled every 5 years cleaned with new oil, it will last forever. A quartz watch after 5-10 yrs, you will not find a spare part anywhere, and you cannot make it, you cannot make an electronic circuit yourself

00.03.18 – 00.04.10

Vianney Halter

I make with the wheel with a screw and the different pieces the same universe I have around me and with the,  for who I have a fascination, and with a wheel , the simple wheel I make the same movement, and the planet. Each with the human representation of my understanding for the universe. When I look into the watch, I feel like Alice in Wonderland, because this movement is completely crazy and my world is also completely crazy. 

00.04.15 – 00.04.25

Vianney Halter

Each watch is unique because I make by hand , but it’s unique because it’s just one action of creation

00.04.29 – 00.05.02

Vianney Halter

Each time when you finish you have the memory of this, of the making, of the tool, of all the people around and when the story is finished the time again is a reality, it is. I don’t like the reality of the real time, I prefer my reality in my time. If you don’t have this human intervention on the material, the materials don’t live.

00.05.07 - 00.05.32

Phillippe Dufour

When I decide to make the simplicity from the first sketches until the exhibition in Basel it took me two years.  Some people are waiting 2 or 3 years to get their watch, but no one ever complain, they are happy to wait. They know at a certain time somebody is going to start their watch.   It is just marvellous

00.05.54 – 00.06.58

Phillippe Dufour

I always say the value besides the gold or platinum case is what we add, we spend a lot of hours, days making things nice, nice finishing and in fact it’s what gives the value of the product, when you compare with the mass produced watches you know, we produce watches with a soul. It’s a little bit maybe my mission to slow the process were living today, the process today is to make everything cheaper and faster and to sell very expensive, but nobody has a view for the next 5 or 10 years, they don’t want to see so far. I see sometimes the produce is losing something, certain soul or certain aim, no emotion in fact. I try to do my best that the watch will go through generations and I know it will go through.

00.07.00 – 00.07.52   

Vianney Halter

When we make the watch by hand, each watch have lot imperfection, for me the perfection is this quantity of imperfection. Perfect is not pure, it’s not pure for me because perfect is too mathematic, too restore its fault ok. But If you find a new equation and the resolute is not 4 it’s 5, you don’t understand it’s not perfect it’s fault your reaction. But you search for find why you think is this, and during this process I think you learn, you understand you learn because your brain work in this time.      

00.07.59

Phillippe Dufour

I used to say that my watches are selfish. Because no one is going to stop you in London for example and say “hey you are wearing a Dufour” because no one recognise , so people chose the watch because they understood the watch. It’s funny because people already discovering the fact of winding a watch, they lost it because the quartz watch is automatic. But to wind it to listen to the click click of the winding mechanics, people are crazy about that. They realise also without them the watch is dying, so you have to feed you watch everyday and you create this relation. Every time a watch maker go into retirement,  we are losing something. I said for example Switzerland is a about 400 years old, watching making history in Switzerland it’s a book thick like that and every time a watch maker go into retirement a page is missing and this page you will never replace it, that’s for sure. It’s not only watch making in all crafts, craftsmen in every profession. It could be a cabinet maker could be anything. We are losing everyday more and one day we will realise, but we lost everything. We’d have to re invent ,  but it’ll be too late.