Distance(s) #16, or: the streets are cleared too late

Un film comme les autres - JLG, 1968, 16/35mm

Histoire(s) du cinéma 1A: Toutes les histoires - JLG, 1998, video

Des animaux #2

Pilgrimage - John Ford, 1933, 35mm

Digressions on the photographic agony #2

I Wish I Knew - Jia Zhangke, 2010, HD video

My father, Wang Xiaohe, joined the Communist Party on May 4th, 1942. The Party ordered him to go to Yangshupu Electric Power Plant, where, in 1948, everything went wrong for the KMT [Chinese Nationalist Party]. There was a surge in protests by students and workers, and my father was caught up in all that. The enemy was watching him closely, and eventually they charged him with destroying a power generator. They arrested him on April 21st, and he was given a death sentence scheduled for September 27th. I had an elder sister, born 17 months before me (I was born on October 24th, 1948) and on that day, September 27th, my mother was pregnant with me. Despite being heavily pregnant, she picked up my sister and went to the prison gate with our Grandma. Many people came along in support, and the traffic around Tilanqiao Prison was clogged up all day. Some policemen whipped my mother with a belt, trying to drive her away. She didn't leave, of course.

After all that, the Tilanqiao Prison put up a notice: it said they hadn't got the execution order, so it wouldn't be carried out that day. My father was being held in Yangshupu. They brought him to Tilanqiao Prison, which had a special court to sentence people in secret. Just for the convenience of the KMT. They convicted and sentenced my father. He was executed in Tilanqiao Prison around 10 o'clock on the morning of September 30th. Put to death. On that day, a journalist from Ta Kung Pao in Hong Kong conducted interviews. He took many pictures. Lots of people took photos when my father was brought outside the prison after the closed court session. I know my father from those pictures. He died three weeks before I was born, so I never met him. I knew him only from those pictures. I miss him so much, though. I never knew my father's love.

--Wang Peimin, trans. Tony Rayns.

In 1972, during the Cultural Revolution, my boss gave me an assignment. A very famous European director, Michelangelo Antonioni, was coming here to make a film about China. I heard that he'd been invited by Premier Zhou Enlai, so it was up to us to meet all his needs. On the second day of filming, we were shooting on Nanjing Road. It struck me that he was filming a lot of bad things, things that reflected our backwardness. It seemed totally unfair. When it kept happening, I made a protest: I said: “If you keep on like this, I'll have to stop you.” He said: “Everything I've seen is very good! What do you think is not good?” He thought everything was fine. The way I saw it, things were far from fine: “We have very good things, but you just shoot such backward stuff.” Our standards were so different.

Two years later, out of the blue, our work unit's military rep arrested me. He took me from home to the TV station, and spelled it out: Antonioni's movie, China. The leaders of the Cultural Revolution, such as Jiang Qing, Zhang Chunqiao, Yao Wenyuan and so on, had watched the film and advised it was anti-China, anti-communist, an anti-people poisonous weed! I later heard that the Gang of Four [Jiang Qing, Zhang Chunqiao, Yao Wenyuan & Wang Hongwen] were using the case as a pretext to attack Premier Zhou. At one point, we came here to attend a criticism meeting. We went to all the places where he'd filmed, such as Shanghai Oil Refinery, and everywhere we went we were criticized and denounced. I was called a small traitor, a spy, a counter-revolutionary! And so on. At that time, I was just thirty years old. How could I have been so politically mature? Even now I have no clear idea about exactly what Antonioni had shot. I've never seen the film. To this day, I don't know exactly what's in it.

--Zhu Qiansheng, trans. Tony Rayns.

Chung Kuo, Cina, 1972 / I Wish I Knew, 2010

Realism(s) #10, or: a little lecture from the standpoint of the police

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A Small Contribution to the Theme of Realism

It is not often that the real effectivity of artistic methods can be successfully tested. Mostly one experiences at best agreement (‘Yes, you show the way it is with us’), or that one has given an ‘initiative’ in some direction or other. Here is a little test which turned out happily.

I had made the film Kuhle Wampe [1932] with Slatan Dudow and Hanns Eisler, a film which depicted the desperate situation of the unemployed in Berlin. It was a montage of a few fairly self-contained parts. The first showed the suicide of a young unemployed worker. The censors made great difficulties which led to a meeting, with the censor and the lawyers of the film company.*

The censor proved himself a clever man. He said: ‘No-one disputes your right to portray a suicide. Suicides happen. Further, you can even show the suicide of an unemployed worker. That also happens. I see no reason to hush it up, gentlemen. I do however object to the way you have depicted the suicide of your unemployed worker. It is not in the interest of the public which I have to defend. I am sorry, but I must make an artistic objection.’

We said (offended): ‘?’

He went on: ‘Yes, it will surprise you, but I object on the grounds that your portrayal does not seem to me human enough. You have not depicted a human being, but rather, let us admit it, a type. Your unemployed worker is not a real individual, not a man of flesh and blood, different from all other men, with particular worries, particular pleasures, ultimately with a particular fate. He is very superficially portrayed, as artists pardon me this strong expression for the fact that we learn too little about him, but the consequences are of a political nature, and this forces me to protest against the release of your film. Your film has the tendency to present suicide as typical, as a matter not of this or that (morbidly inclined) individual, but as the fate of a whole class! It is your opinion that society induces young men to commit suicide by refusing them the possibility to work. And you really do not bother to go on to indicate what advice should be given to the unemployed to bring about a change in this situation. No, gentlemen, you haven't behaved as artists, not in this case. You did not try to present a single, shocking case, something no-one could have objected to.’

We sat disconcerted. We had the unpleasant impression that we had been seen through. Eisler sadly wiped his glasses, Dudow curled up as if in pain. Despite my dislike for speeches I stood up and made one. I strongly denied the accusations. I cited individual features we had given our young unemployed worker. For example, the fact that before he hurled himself from the window, he took his wristwatch off. I claimed that this purely human feature alone had given us the inspiration for the entire scene. That we did in fact show other unemployed workers who did not commit suicide - to wit, 4000 of them, for we had also filmed a large workers' sports club. I protested against the monstrous suggestion that we had not acted artistically, and hinted at the possibility of a press campaign. I was not ashamed to claim that my artistic reputation was at stake.

The censor was not afraid to discuss the details of the presentation. Our lawyers looked on in astonishment as a regular artistic debate unfolded. The censor emphasised the fact that we had lent the suicide act a decidedly demonstrative character. He used the expression ‘somewhat mechanical’. Dudow stood up and excitedly demanded that a medical opinion be sought. This would prove that actions of this kind often create a mechanical impression. The censor shook his head. ‘That may be,’ he said stubbornly. ‘But you must admit that your suicide avoids everything in the way of impulsiveness. The spectator hardly wants to stop him, so to speak, as should happen in an artistic, human, warm-hearted presentation. Good God, the actor behaves just as if he was showing how to peel cucumbers!’

We had a hard time getting our film passed. Going out of the building, we did not hide our esteem for the acute censor. He had penetrated far deeper into the substance of our artistic aims than our most well-wishing critics. He had read us a little lecture on realism. From the standpoint of the police.

--Bertolt Brecht. Written sometime in the 1930s, published in Screen 15.2, 1974, p.45-47. Trans. Ben Brewster and Keith Tribe.

[*Kuhle Wampe was submitted to the Film Inspection Office (Filmprüfstelle) in March 1932, and recommended for banning by officials of the Ministry of the Interior (Minister General Wilhelm Groener). This decision was accepted by the Film Inspection Office on March 31st. Two dissenting officials demanded a further hearing in the presence of Brecht, Dudow and Ottwald, and invited experts in the Higher Film Inspection Office for a hearing that took place on April 9th (of which Brecht is writing above). Praesens-Film were legally represented by Dr Otto Landsberg and Dr Dienstag, and the ban was confirmed. After a protest campaign in the press, Praesens-Film re-submitted a slightly cut version to the Film Inspection Office which, on April 21st, allowed the film (still subject to further cuts) to be exhibited to adults only. The Chairman, Regierungsrat Zimmermann, protested against this decision, but withdrew his objection on April 25th. After a first performance in mid-May in Moscow, the film was released in Berlin on May 30th. One of the further cuts that were made at a third hearing included a sequence showing worker athletes bathing nude on a Sunday morning. The cut was demanded because church bells could be heard in the background, and the censors claimed this could be construed as an attack on the church. No pre-censorship version of Kuhle Wampe survives today.]

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Finally we even had to move some of the tent scenes into the studio. They were not shot at Kuhle Wampe because Kuhle Wampe was a very extraordinary place, fantastically tidy and more or less petit-bourgeois. It's true there were many proletarians there, but if you'd seen this proletariat you'd have been surprised. If the German proletariat and the German middle classes were together, at the seaside, say, they all looked alike. Brighton would have looked a slum by comparison with Kuhle Wampe.

Q: The petit-bourgeois appearance of the German proletariat must have been one of the reasons why the film was so poorly received in the USSR.

Yes, that's a very interesting story. The book [Kuhle Wampe, Protokoll des Films und Materialen, eds. Wolfgang Gersch & Werner Hecht, Suhrkamp Verlag, 1969] says that the film had its world premiere in Russia, but it wasn't a real world premiere at all. The Russians saw the film first and then invited Brecht; he wouldn't have gone otherwise. He went, and there was a very selective screening for a small number of people. Brecht was very disappointed, and they said to him, "How can we show this film? Your 'poor' people have motor-bikes and this marvellous holiday place. We haven't got anything like that here. That's why we can't show the film."

--George Hoellering, interviewed by Ben Brewster and Colin MacCabe (at the Academy Cinema, London, July 1974), "Making Kuhle Wampe," Screen 15.4, 1974, p.75.

Des animaux #1

Pickup on South Street - Sam Fuller, 1953, 35mm

Distance(s) #15

Young Mr. Lincoln - John Ford, 1939, 35mm

Quei loro incontri - Straub-Huillet, 2006, 35mm

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Virtue is unvirtuous, reason unreasonable, intolerance rules everywhere, everyway. For the Augustinian-Irish-Catholic John Ford, sin is inescapable; without God’s grace, we are lost. Thus Ford’s movies are melodramas set-to-music of darkness battling light – in myriad shades of grey. Each life is a pilgrimage and a cross.

--Tag Gallagher, 2006.

Demeter: Who could have guessed that their wretched lives could hold such riches? For them I am a fierce mountain, bristling with forest; I am cloud and cave, goddess of harvests and towers and cities; Lady of the Lions, goddess of cradle and tomb, and mother of Core. Everything I am I owe to them.

Dionysus: They're always talking about me, too.

Demeter: Then shouldn't we help them more, Dionysus? Make amends to them somehow? Stand at their side in the brief instant of their lives?

Dionysus: You gave them grain, Deo. I gave them the vine. Let them be. What more do they need?

Demeter: I don't know why it is, but our gifts are always ambiguous. Double-bladed axes. My Son Triptolemus almost had his throat cut when he brought that Scythian stranger his gift of grain. Even your gifts cause the shredding of innocent blood, Dionysus. Or so I hear.

Dionysus: But they wouldn't be men if they weren't miserable. Death is what they're born for. It's death that drives them to their efforts, to memory and foresight. And don't go supposing, Deo, that their blood is any better than the wheat or wine with which we feed it. Blood is vile, foul, wretched.

Demeter: You're young, Iacchus, and you don't know that they discovered us in blood. You course restlessly through the world, and for you death is like wine: exalting, an ecstasy. But you forget that mortals have suffered every story they tell of us. How many mortal mothers have lost their Core and never seen her again? Even today the richest offering they make is blood.

Dionysus: Is it an offering, Deo? You know better than I that there was a time when they thought that in killing their victims they were killing us.

Demeter: Can you blame them? This is why I said they discovered us in blood. If for them death is the end and the beginning, then they have to kill us in order to see us reborn. They are very unhappy, Iacchus.

Dionysus: You think so? They seem stupid to me. But maybe not. They are so mortal that by killing themselves they give a meaning to life. They have to live and die their own stories.

--Cesare Pavese, Dialogues with Leuco, 1947, trans. William Arrowsmith & D.S Carne-Ross (Eridanos, 1989), p.176-177.

Forests #7

Une visite au Louvre - Straub-Huillet, 2004, 35mm

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Together and apart we walked along the forest's sharply turning paths. Foreign to us, our steps were united, for they went in unison over the crackling softness of the yellow and half-green leaves that matted the ground's unevenness. But they also went separately, for we were two minds, with nothing in common except for the fact that what we weren't was already treading in unison over the same resonant ground. Autumn had already begun, and besides the leaves under our feet we could hear, in the wind's rough accompaniment, the constant falling of other leaves, or sounds of leaves, wherever we walked or had walked. There was no landscape but the forest, which veiled all others. But it was a good enough place for people like us, whose only life was to walk diversely and in unison over a moribund ground. I believe it was the close of day, the close of that day or any day, or perhaps all days, in an autumn that was all autumns, in the symbolic and true forest.

Not even we could say what homes, duties and loves we'd left behind. We were, in that moment, no more than wayfarers between what we didn't know, knights on foot defending an abandoned ideal. But that explained, along with the steady sound of trampled leaves and the forever rough sound of an unsteady wind, the reason for our departure, or for our return, since, not knowing where the path was, or why, we didn't know if we were coming or going. And always, all around us, the sound of leaves we couldn't see, falling we didn't know where, lulled the forest to sleep with sadness.

Although we paid no attention to each other, neither of us would've continued alone. We kept each other company with the drowsiness we both felt. The sound of our steps in unison helped each of us to think without the other, whereas our own solitary steps would have brought the other to mind. The forest was all false clearings, as if the forest itself was false, or were ending, but neither it nor the falseness were going to end. Our steps kept going in unison, and around the sound of the leaves we were trampling we heard a very soft sound of leaves falling in the forest that had become everything, in the forest that was the universe.

Who were we? Were we two, or two forms of one? We didn't know and we didn't ask. A hazy sun presumably existed, for it wasn't night in the forest. A vague aim presumably existed, for we were walking. Some world or other presumably existed, since a forest existed. But what it was or might be was foreign to us, two perpetual walkers treading in unison over dead leaves, anonymous and impossible listeners to falling leaves. Nothing else. A now harsh now gentle murmur of the inscrutable wind, a now loud now soft rustle of the unfallen leaves, a vestige, a doubt, a goal that had perished, an illusion that never was - the forest, the two walkers, and I, I, unsure of which one I was, or if I was both, or neither, and without seeing it to the end I watched the tragedy of nothing ever having existed but the autumn and the forest, the always rough and unsteady wind, and the always fallen and falling leaves. And always, as if surely there were a sun and day out there, one could see clearly - to nowhere - in the clamorous silence of the forest.

--Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet, trans. Richard Zenith (Penguin, 2002), p.319-320.

Material evidence, or: our hoarsened voice

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"In this country, nobody ends up in jail unless they're guilty."

--Fury, Fritz Lang, 1936.

A great political film would not give us statistics, but figures instead. In Fury there are figures: how many people have been lynched per week for such and such a length of time. In Trop tôt, trop tard we included figures: a third of the population of such and such village is unable to survive...

--Jean-Marie Straub, in conversation with François Albera & Danièle Huillet, Sickle and Hammer, Cannons, Cannons, Dynamite!, 2001, published in the 2004 Straub-Huillet Viennale & Filmmuseum retrospective catalogue, p.43.

And yet we knew:

Even the hatred of squalor

Distorts one’s features.

Even anger against injustice

Makes the voice grow hoarse. We

Who wished to lay the foundation for gentleness

Could not ourselves be gentle.

But you, when at last the time comes

That man can aid his fellow man,

Should think upon us

With leniency.

--Bertolt Brecht, An die Nachgeborenen / To Those Who Follow in Our Wake, 1939.