Contents Nº 2

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Nº 2 FORMS IN REVOLUTION

Editorial
Gonzalo de Lucas

FILMS UNDER DISCUSSION. INTERVIEWS

The Power of Political, Militant, 'Leftist' Cinema. Interview with Jacques Rancière

ABSTRACT

In this interview, Jacques Rancière tackles specific questions about politics, aesthetics and cinema, presenting explanations that may help to orientate readers through the though of the French thinker. The several periods characterising his work since the 1970s and, mainly from the publication of Proletarian Nights in 1981: his supposed ‘aesthetic turn’ – from workers’ history or political theory to aesthetics, which was always present since his first Works, theory, art and politics from the point of view of the ‘gaps of cinema’, the concept of the ‘politics of the amateur’ and its possible application in other arts, the distinction between the Brechtian paradigm (Group Dziga Vertov, Medvedkine) and the post-Brechtian paradigm (Straub-Huillet), as well as the relationship between ‘filmic language’ and the political struggles or the possible distinction between European cinema (the mythological order) and the American one (the order of the legendary), questions that he has addressed in his works of the last years, in which cinema has an increasing importance.

Javier Bassas Vila

A French Roman. A Story about the Influence of Soviet Avant-Garde on Cahiers du Cinéma and the Later Rediscovery of Nicholas Ray. Interview with Bernard Eisenschitz

ABSTRACT

Conversation with the critic and historian Bernard Eisenschitz about the influence of 1920s avant-garde Soviet cinema in the magazine Cahiers du cinéma in the late 1960s and early 70s and specifically during the turbulent period in which he was part of the magazine (1967–72). Repercussion of the rediscovery of that cinema (in which Eisenschitz played a key role thanks to his travels to Moscow in the late 1960s) for the ideological line of the magazine: the impact, specifically, of Eisenstein and his writings, in an editorial team whose ideological father, André Bazin, was always against the manipulation through editing. The article also traces a parallel with the arrival of the ‘New Cinemas’ during that period. The political consequences of such rediscoveries are logically an important point in th period of critical radicalisation of which Eisenschitz narrates his own itinerary, which finally leads to a late revision of American cinema and Nicholas Ray.

Fernando Ganzo

A conversation with Jackie Raynal

ABSTRACT

This conversation between two film-makers belonging navigates the progressive changes of cinema as lived by Jackie Raynal since the 1960s (her education, Langlois’s programmes, her experience Turing the period of radicalisation, the so-called ‘critical generation’, the creation and development of the Group Zanzibar, collective forms of working), which are set in relationship to the experience of Pierre Léon since the 1980s. In addition, Raynal and Léon discuss the work of film-makers such as Jean Rouch or Mario Ruspoli and the relationship of ‘direct cinema’ to New American Cinema, the link Renoir-Rohmer, the transformation of ‘language’ in ‘idiom’ in relationship to classical cinema and its reception at the time, feminism and the reaction to Deus foix, collectives’ such as Medvedkine or Cinélutte vs. Zanzibar, the differences between the New York underground (Warhol, Jacobs, Malanga) and the French one (Deval, Arrietta, Bard) and, finally, the work of Raynal as film programmer alter leaving Paris and the Zanzibar Group, at the Bleecker St. Cinema, tackling issues such as the evolution of the audience in that venue, the different positions of American and French criticism, the programmes ‘Rivette in Context’ (Rosenbaum) and ‘New French Cinema’ (Daney and Skorecki) or the differences in the role of the ‘passeur’ of the critic and the programmer.

Pierre Léon (in collaboration with Fernando Ganzo)

Interview with Ken and Flo Jacobs. Part 1: Interruptions

ABSTRACT

The Bicycle Thief on one shoulder, Betty Boop on the other, Jacobs’ films work, I think, something like a Luftmensch’s peregonations: an explorations into strange lands that can only unfold as a series of digressions from one place to another. A shaggy dog story for the eyes. So as we agreed, our conversation, our first of some to follow, would be open-air and open to sidetracking—whether our own wayward thoughts or people stopping by. On abysmal audio, I recorded the three of us—Ken, Flo, me—as we sat in the MoMA lobby before the première of new Ernie Gehr films, and then sauntered down to our seats. We started with childhood, and the rest, appropriately, is a sequence of interruptions.

David Phelps

ARTICLES

EXPRMNTL: An Expanded Festival. Programming and Polemics at EXPRMNTL 4, Knokke-le-Zoute, 1967

ABSTRACT

This article compiles the several manifestations and witness’ accounts of the 4th edition of the International Festival of International Cinema of Knokke-le-Zoute (EXPRMNTL 4), celebrated in 1967: its conception by Jacques Ledoux and the Cinémathèque Royale de Bélgique and the evolution of the festival through its first editions, the aesthetic, political and cultural concerns, the competition programme and the non-filmic activities, as well as other events, such as the multimedia spectacle Moviemovie, the meetings to stimulate the creation of an international network of American, European and Asian experimental film-makers or the concerts and performances, which extended well beyond the spaces of the Casino where the festival was held. Finally, the essay details some of the events that happened within the atmosphere of protest that marked that edition of 1967: from clandestine screenings to several demonstrations and forms of boycott, signalling the moment at which aesthetic and political avant-gardes began to diverge. Among the witnesses here compiled, it is worth mentioning the accounts of the film-makers Birgit and Wilhelm Hein and Harun Farocki.

Xavier Garcia Bardon

The Wondrous 60s: An e-mail exchange between Miguel Marías and Peter von Bagh

ABSTRACT

Drawing from the interview with Jean Narboni published in our most recent issue, Miguel Marías and Peter von Bagh reminisce how they each lived the decade of the 1960s, when five different generations of film-makers coexisted: from the last film-makers of silent cinema to the first films of the film-makers of the ‘Nouvelle Vague’, as well as the broad spectrum between each of them. Together they also analyse the aesthetic trajectory of certain authors, the confluence of ‘popular cinema’ and ‘auteur cinema’ and the concepts themselves, and even suggest some double bills or analyse some historical facts associated to their own countries (Spain and Finland) or others that affect cinema at a global level and their cinephilia in particular.

Miguel Marías and Peter von Bagh

Paradoxes of the Nouvelle Vague

ABSTRACT

This essay begins at the start of the magazine Cahiers du cinéma and with the film-making debut of five of its main members: François Truffaut, Claude Chabrol, Eric Rohmer, Jacques Rivette and Jean-Luc Godard. At the start they have shared approaches, tastes, passions and dislikes (above all, about a group of related film-makers from so-called ‘classical cinema’). Over the course of time, their aesthetic and political positions begin to divide them, both as people and in terms of their work, until they reach a point where reconciliation is not posible between the ‘midfield’ film-makers (Truffaut and Chabrol) and the others, who choose to control their conditions or methods of production: Rohmer, Rivette and Godard. The essay also proposes a new view of work by Rivette and Godard, exploring a relationship between their interest in film shoots and montage processes, and their affinities with various avant-gardes: early Russian avant-garde in Godard’s case and in Rivette’s, 1970s American avant-gardes and their European translation.

Marcos Uzal