Ce n’est qu’un début (ARC collective, 10 mn., 1968).
1968-2018, TAKING THE FLOOR/ TAKING PICTURES WORKSHOPS PROJECTIONS ROUND TABLES 9:45 AM – 6:30 PM THURSDAY JULY 5
F THÉÂTRE D’ARLES — Free admission
Workshops, projections and round tables based on an idea by the documentary filmmakers’ platform Tënk.
“Last May, we took the floor like they took the Bastille in 1789,” wrote Michel de Certeau in 1968. Pictures were also taken. In a few weeks, authority figures were toppled and seats of power taken over. Demonstrating, occupying and appropriating space was already a way of representing oneself, casting off the representations to which one had been assigned.
Filmmakers and photographers were drawn into this visible transformation of the social order, taking an active part by making and almost immediately showing images. Throughout the 1960s, collectives used film not just to document struggles but also to amplify them. They not only glorified the combativeness of workers echoing the activism of leftist groups, but also went into striking factories to meet those who were struggling and share their fight. In the early 1970s, other filmmakers, often using video, accompanied the women’s and gay rights movements. With researchers and witnesses, we recall that history, when ways of making films in common were invented in opposition to professional norms and social hierarchies. Fifty years after the May events, in obviously different contexts, photographers and filmmakers continue making images of today’s movements that are very different from those in the mainstream media. Most of them would probably reject the term “militant” to describe their work. However, being involved in a conflict situation necessarily leads them to think about their role and their relationships with those they film, photograph or cooperate with. With photographers and filmmakers in Notre-Damedes‑Landes and Calais, we will try to see what forms the concepts of commitment and counter-information can take today.
MORNING
AFTERNOON
“THE 1960S: IMAGES AT THE SERVICE OF MOVEMENTS”
“ALTERNATIVE IMAGE-MAKING IN TODAY’S CONFLICT-TORN AREAS”
9:45 AM
Welcome and presentation Introductory screening of a short made in May 68: Ce n’est qu’un début (ARC collective, 10 min.) 10 AM – 1 1 AM
Uses of photography in May 1968 A look at the 1968, What a Story! exhibition with curator Bernadette Caille and photography historian Guillaume Blanc’s views on photographers Jacques Windenberger and Jean Pottier’s commitment during the May events. 11 AM – N OON
The rise of activist filmmakers’ collectives Film historian Sébastien Layerle dialogues with filmmaker Jean‑Denis Bonan, member of the ARC and Cinélutte collectives. NOON – 1 PM
When feminists picked up cameras Nicole Fernández Ferrer talks about filmmaker Carole Roussopoulos and feminist filmmaking collectives.
2:30 PM
Preview of Fugitif, où cours-tu? A film Élisabeth Perceval and Nicolas Klotz made in Calais (a Shellac production, in association with ARTE France La Lucarne, 70 min, 2018, French version). 4PM – 5 :30 PM
Looks on Calais and Notre‑Dame‑des-Landes É. Perceval and N. Klotz discuss their diptych L’Héroïque lande (2017)/ Fugitif, où cours-tu? with film historian Caroline Zéau. Photographers Élisa Larvego, Gilles Raynaldy and Louis Matton (who worked in Calais and Notre-Dame-des-Landes) discuss emblematic sites of contemporary conflicts and how filmmakers and photographers portray them. 5:30 – 6 :30 PM
Aesthetic Forms/Political Commitments: Breaks and Continuity from May 68 to Today. Round table led by Caroline Zéau
ARLES ON TËNK!
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FRIDAY JULY 6 8:30 PM
Screening of João Moreira Salles’ film Dans l’intense maintenant (2017, 127 min), at Cinémas Actes Sud Jean-Marie Barbe, the head of Tënk, and workshop leaders Arnaud Lambert and David Benassayag introduce the film. Mixing footage of May 68, amateur films about the crushing of the Prague Spring the same year and images of his mother traveling in China during the Cultural Revolution, Mr. Moreira Salles questions the posterity of the most intense moments of personal or private history: how is it possible to live after their dazzling perfection?
SPEAKERS
Bernadette Caille Publisher, iconographer, freelance curator and teacher Bernadette Caille lives and works in Paris and Marseille. The 1968, What a Story! exhibition traces the events of May and June with photographs from the Paris police archives, most of which have never been published. They show the other side of the barricades: mobilization, street fighting and sleepless nights. The events will also be seen through a selection of posters made by fine arts students helped and advised by prominent artists. In conclusion, Argentine artist Marcelo Brodsky presents his work, based on archival documents, on social unrest in Brazil, Mexico, Italy and Germany, between lyricism and violence, that closed the 1960s. Guillaume Blanc Guillaume Blanc is a Ph.D. student in the history of photography at Université Paris 1 PanthéonSorbonne under the direction of Michel Poivert. His thesis is about the political dimension of photography in postwar France. He has been a researcher at the National Institute of Art History since 2015 and a member of its scientific council since 2016. He co‑led the Association de Recherche sur l’Image Photographique, a center for young researchers in the history of photography, from 2014 to 2016, and has been general secretary of the Société française de photographie since autumn 2017. His recent work includes a scientific contribution to the Icons of May 68 show currently at the Bibliothèque nationale de France.
Sébastien Layerle Sébastien Layerle, a lecturer at Université Sorbonne Nouvelle-Paris 3 (Ircav) specializing in political cinema and the audiovisual of social intervention, is the author of Caméras en lutte en Mai 68 (Nouveau Monde, 2008). He co‑directed Le Cinéma militant reprend le travail with G. Gauthier, T. Heller and M. Martineau-Hennebelle (CinémAction, no. 110, 2004) and coordinated the early video seminar (with A. Carou, H. Fleckinger, C. Roudé, 2012-2015, earlyvideo. hypotheses.org). His latest published work is Chroniques de la naissance du cinéma algérien: Guy Hennebelle, un critique engagé (CinémAction, no. 166, 2018). Jean-Denis Bonan Filmmaker Jean-Denis Bonan was a founding member of the militant ARC collective active in May 1968. Later, he joined the Cinélutte group, for which he made several documentaries. As an insurgent filmmaker, his earliest works were censured during the Gaullist period and remained invisible for 40 years. Finally coming out in 2014, they met with unanimous acclaim from critics. Mr. Bonan wrote and directed over 60 fiction and documentary films for television, including La Femme Bourreau, a feature-length film shot in May 68. He is currently finishing two other features: Les tueurs d’ordinaire, un roman familial and La Soif et le parfum.
Nicole Fernández Ferrer Nicole Fernández Ferrer, general delegate of the Simone de Beauvoir Audiovisual Centre in Paris, works with young people from the primary school to university level, art schools and prison inmates. She is also an adult education trainer, archivist, researcher and subtitle writer. Nicole Fernández Ferrer has lectured on feminist cinema in Beijing, Quebec, Barcelona, New York, Seoul and Taipei, sits on various festival juries and is a member of the Cinémathèque française, Prix Simone de Beauvoir pour la liberté des femmes, CinéTilt, 7e Genre and Archives du féminisme. She is active in the struggle for women’s and LGBTQI rights. Nicolas Klotz and Élisabeth Perceval Nicolas Klotz and Élisabeth Perceval have made eleven fiction and documentary feature—and medium—length films, shorts, videos and cinematographic installations that are shown at the main international festivals and feature in retrospectives abroad. Their work questions the cinematographic form and its narrative mutations as much as the upheavals rocking contemporary life. Selective filmography: Fugitif où cours‑tu?/L’Héroïque Lande (la frontière brûle)/Hamlet In Palestine/ Mata Atlantica/La Question Humaine/ La Blessure/Paria.
Caroline Zéau Caroline Zéau is a lecturer and director of the documentary film master’s program at Université de Picardie Jules Verne in Amiens. Her Ph.D. thesis was published as L’Office national du film et le cinéma canadien (1939-2003). Éloge de la frugalité by éditions Peter Lang and she has just published Pour la suite du monde: Façons de croire, façons de dire, façons de faire at Yellow Now. She specializes in practices and forms in the development of direct cinema and does research on the means of artisanal cinema and participation in cinema. She is a member of the board of directors of the Centre de création cinématographique Périphérie. Élisa Larvego Born 1984 in Geneva, Élisa Larvego studied at the École d’arts appliqués in Vevey and the Haute école d’art et de design in Geneva. In 2013, she published a monograph, In Every Place, at Ahead (Geneva). Her work has been exhibited by various institutions, including the Musée de l’Élysée (Lausanne), Rencontres d’Arles, Air de Paris gallery, Condition Publique (Roubaix), Adresse des Printemps de Septembre (Toulouse), PhotoEspaña festival (Madrid) and Centro de la Imagen (Mexico). In 2016, Ms. Larvego participated in the CNAP’s “Reinventing Calais” commission in collaboration with the association PEROU. Her work— portraits in which the environment plays a prominent role—evokes the connections between the volunteers and refugees working and living in the Calais jungle.
Louis Matton Born 1989, Louis Matton graduated from the ENSP in Arles. From 2012 to 2015, he made Objets Autonomes, devoted to objects produced by the occupants of the future development site in Notre‑Dame-des‑Landes. That work was shown at the Rencontres d’Arles, the F-Stop Festival and the Quinzaine Photographique Nantaise. Co‑published by Poursuite and l’Éditeur du Dimanche, Objets Autonomes will come out as a book in autumn 2018. In 2014, he launched the Aéroparis project, which imagines an airport being built in the capital’s center. La Maison de Projet d’Aéroparis was exhibited at the Temple art space and the Friche Belle de Mai in 2017 and the BIP in Liège in 2018. In 2016, Éléonore Lubna and Mr. Matton started the Serpiente de Oro project. Following in Werner Herzog’s footsteps in Peru, they documented the Awajun Indians’ struggle against multinationals and the rapacious Peruvian state. Gilles Raynaldy Born 1968, Gilles Raynaldy graduated from the École nationale supérieure d’art in Paris-Cergy. For around 20 years, he has focused on the social aspects of architecture, urban planning and housing, often in the framework of commissions. From 2005 to 2012, he photographed the site and construction of the new National Archives in Pierrefitte-sur‑Seine. From 2008 to 2012, during a residency organized by Le Bal/La Fabrique du regard, he shared the daily life of students at the Jean‑Jaurès school in Montreuil, a project published by Purpose in 2015 as a book called Jean-Jaurès. As part of the CNAP’s “Reinventing Calais” commission in collaboration with the PEROU association, in 2016 Mr. Raynaldy photographed the inventions, resistance, adjustments and resourcefulness of people living in the “jungle”.
Arnaud Lambert Critic and filmmaker Arnaud Lambert is the author of Also Known as Chris Marker, published by centre d’art / éditeur in 2008 and republished in 2013. He has published in the journals Éclipses and Vertigo and regularly contributes to Images de la culture, the catalogue of the Centre National de la Cinématographie. He made a filmed essay inspired by Jean-Michel Palmier’s Retour à Berlin and, with Jean-Marie Barbe, a film called Chris Marker, Never Explain, Never Complain. He has programmed the Grands Entretiens, le gai savoir show on Tënk since the platform started in 2016. David Benassayag After studying letters and working in publishing, in 2008 David Benassayag became co-director of Le Point du Jour, centre d’art / éditeur, a Cherbourg-based art center and publisher. Focusing on photography, Le Point du Jour features works by artists as well as documents often involving social and political issues. The program regularly includes documentary films. Recent Point du Jour publications include Attica, USA, 1971, edited by Philippe Artières, about a prison uprising emblematic of struggles in the late 1960s-early 1970s.