Brooklyn Rail & Nicole Brenez

“the fact that one can think with certain films, and not simply about them, is the irrefutable sign of their value”

Essential reading from the Brooklyn Rail,interview with Nicole Brenez (click here for article). Excerpts:

"[from] 1930s Spain, in colonial Africa since the ’50s and in the Tricontinental countries during the ’60s and ’70s. The important historical figures in this scenario are essentially communists or communist sympathizers such as Joris Ivens or René Vautier, but also anarchists such as Armand Guerra or Armand Gatti ... all of these internationalist initiatives deserve to be passed on to contemporary protest movements: Their freedom and courage resonate with current initiatives, and these filmmakers are often the ancestors of those who fight through images today. Lastly, their example and their ideals allow us to fight the current reign of nationalist or even communitarian ideologies."

"René Vautier, Jean-Luc Godard, and Jean-Pierre Gorin and their camera operator Armand Marco had the same experience and came to the same conclusion, mutadis mutandis: Though they were anxious to put themselves at the service of the struggle of people who had been colonized by their own nation, they refused nevertheless to let their images be controlled or dictated to them."

"On the contrary, the proliferation of images seems to me to be a wonderful phenomenon: more images and films in line with standardized forms, of course, but also more formal, visual, and logistical innovations. There is a sea of inventive and valuable proposals that we will need to start exploring."

"[about Film Socialisme and the short above] both emerge from a “republic of images,” in other words from forms of montage that de-hierarchize formats, techniques, textures, and qualities, to the benefit of a more far-reaching, more political perspective and at the expense of technophilic and economic criteria."

"[about taking over the experimental program at Cinémathèque Française] to do justice to such an assignment meant actively contributing to the exploration of those parts of cinema history that remain hidden, to the defense of the most radical or the most fragile movements and to the critique of prejudices and clichés, through concrete action."

"A large part of my work will have been to exhume and to highlight films that are as formally demanding as they are politically, a combination which should be self-evident since critiquing the world order entails critiquing the discursive order."

" ... and all my work is founded in the observation that the history of cinema is as unfair as the general history of humanity when it comes to recognizing its real heroes."

"[about her status in Paris III University] There will be an attempt, like everywhere else, to subjugate and asphyxiate this freedom, not through laws but through administrative and economic constraints, which are far more efficient—similarly to the economic censorship of films, which is infinitely more powerful than political censorship."

"Guerrilla initiatives come from everywhere: from underground, but also from the heart of the fortress, which is called sabotage. When Paul Verhoeven makes Starship Troopers, a super-production based on all the necessary ingredients (actors, screenplay, iconography, props, marketing), in which he represents American imperialism as Nazism, he redirects the apparatus of production itself, and that is a monumental effort, much more complicated than making a radical film in your home."

"In the long term, the effects of politically committed cinema resound infinitely and can emerge completely unexpectedly. One recent case is that of René Vautier’s A Man is Dead (Un homme est mort) ... René Vautier recounted the story in his memoirs of how the 16mm reversible film was destroyed as a result of being projected. Many interventionist films are likewise destined to disappear in the heat of action, like combatants on the front. But since then, during the course of the 2000s, this lost film has continued to generate texts, thoughts, events, concerts, and a comic strip of the same name, A Man is Dead, by Kris and Etienne Davodeau. These disappeared images, because they have disappeared, infuse a whole new generation with inspiration and energy. They have become more alive than all of the “successful” films shot that same year."

All quotes: Nicole Brenez