This film is dedicated to Luca Comerio, a pioneer of Italian cinema who died in 1940 at age 66, completely forgotten and suffering from amnesia. The film is made up from material found in a state of chemical amnesia (as mentioned in the opening titles). In the spring of 1982, Yervant Gianikian and Angela Ricci Lucchi discovered this flammable treasure, which they saved from destruction. It took them five years to compose this long journey through the beginning of the 20th century, the century of the train, the result and instrument of its conquers, of colonialism and war. The film begins with amazing footage of a train travelling through the Tyrolean Mountains. When it passes through the first tunnel, there is a passage of initiation from black to blood-red, and then to black and white – the train conquers the land. A tracking shot that is prolonged with the image of a boat that breaks the ice in Antarctica. On the frozen surface, a hunter shoots a polar bear pointblank. Hit, transfixed, the bear falls down, then stands up again in all its greatness, only to fall down again afterwards. Violence perpetrated by men against animals, men’s violence against men. This is the subject explored by the directors to the sound of the repetitive and astonishing rhythms of Keith Ulrich and Charles Anderson’s music. The film shows aspects about the conquering of the worlds, of the minds, of the bodies and of the masses; of collective representations and oppression systems. We feel the urge to see, over and over again, this inexhaustible film which travels through continents and through the memories of our humane, touching and surprising stories.

The film is made up of fragments from over thirty documentaries directed and screened in Germany between 1933 and 1945. In the film’s text, the director tells us “In Germany, there was never a moment of iconoclasm in which those films were destroyed as a result of an instinctive act of outrage. The films were confiscated, which is different. They were stored, there was still a plan for them. As if they were hostages that could be ransomed, they are allowed to get out. For that to happen, one has to make sure that the context and the careful way in which they are used renders them inoffensive. This is one of the conditions for their use as documents and, as such, they have a double purpose. They are supposed to show fascism as it really was, and tell us what fascism told us at the time. The same old message. But now, it’s a message of terror. At the same time, they are supposed to act as witnesses against themselves, just like what would happen to deserting agents that were denounced. They speak, and the fact is that, even today, we still understand them. We are not confronted with the stammering or hesitation of speaking a foreign language we don’t understand. And there lies another one of the aspects of their availability: these films not only survive this process that converts them into main witnesses – they offer to do so. As if that was precisely their purpose: to act as documental evidence.”

Made from images of news reels and from the reading of the Parisian diaries of German writer Ernst Jünger, La Guerre D’un Seul Homme is a film that stands at the crossing between fiction and documentary, and it’s one of the most unique cinematographic reflections about the Nazi occupation period in France. About the film, Cozarinsky wrote: “Making a film from quotes… finding these quotes makes them say something more than they actually say, something more with a different meaning. I refuse to use the voice of history (‘this was the truth’). I prefer to set the ambiguity of the lies in motion, in order to return what was experienced to the historical moment, without renouncing to the perspective of that moment that is offered to us by the passage of time. A personal pleasure: stopping the image in some anonymous moments to give visibility to the gesture of a voiceless testimony, of a victim without glory”. In his review of the film, Pascal Bonitzer stated that “Cozarinsky inverted – brilliantly, I do not hesitate to say so – the principle of the documentary film: here, it’s the images that serve as commentary to the voice. […] Paradoxically, the result is that this film, which is explicitly based on lies (at least two kinds of lies: the trivial ones, from the propaganda, and the more subtle ones, from literature) ends up being the richest, most truthful and captivating description of the Occupation period.”

In the foreground, we see Raphaël, Yervant Gianikian’s father, reading an excerpt from his memoirs, translating from Armenian. The camera is still for about eight minutes, during which the son occupies a space in the background. Impassive and focused, he is the second point which sustains this triangle, the third being the camera, at which Raphaël looks for a moment. Angela Ricci-Lucci is filming, and it’s undoubtedly a family scene, in which a memory is told, a memory which tells us about the passage from his original culture, the Armenian culture, to his adoptive one, the Italian culture. But, moreover, Io Ricordo is about the transmission of a narrative from one generation to another. This narrative, in its detailed description of a bloody revenge, presents two cultures, the Armenian and the Muslim, in which the director’s father served, a Christian slave in a Kurdish community. The last three minutes immerse us in the secluded atmosphere of the Geghard Monastery in soviet Armenia, with a rupture effect that takes on the dimension of a metaphysical reflection: three candles and the deep singing of a friend – this is the dialectical and Christian response to the absurdity of human violence.

This film, which is based on Gianikian’s father’s diary, is a milestone in the directors’ work. Using images from Russian archives, it shows the emblematic story of the Armenian people. But what is showed? 1915: the Caucasus in flames, armies marching, scenes of mourning… Then, we go back: Saint Petersburg in 1906. The end of an ostentatious kingdom sensed through a march, both solemn and funereal. Afterwards, the triumph of communism. Apparent peace in Armenia. 1935, Soviet realism imposes its world vision. Finally, the return to 1918: the exodus of the Armenian people from Azerbaijan. About the film, the directors wrote: “It’s impossible to forget the long waits and journeys, sometimes useless, that we had to endure to find materials for the film. The desire to search for filmed documents about the history of the Armenian people, its contours. Events passed on by family stories and diaries of exile. Gathering disperse materials, scattered like the Armenian people, in perpetual motion. During the research, excerpts from lost films were found, which expanded the scope of the original idea. Images of historical events from all over the Russian continent, which had been hidden until now, come to light. The timeline of preparing and making the film starts in 1987 with a journey through soviet Armenia, and continues afterwards with a pogrom and an earthquake, together with a political earthquake in the former Soviet Union. Symbolically, in the film’s prologue, in a living picture, Saint Mother Russia appears, figuratively. She embraces and dominates the peoples of the Caucasus. Christians and Muslims are kneeling down at her feet, and are kept at a distance by her sword.”

What can a photograph of a face reveal about a political system? What can a photograph taken over 35 years ago say about the present? Starting from a set of photographs from the criminal records of former political prisoners during the Portuguese dictatorship (1926-1974), 48 shows the mechanisms through which an authoritative system tried to perpetuate itself. “48 tries to work in the area between what a photograph shows and what it doesn’t reveal; but also, between nostalgia and strangeness, between what is stated and what is experienced, between image and memory. Because these photographs are time: the time contained in the fraction of the second in which the prisoner faces his opponent; the time that allows us to enter the suffocating universe of political prisons and remain inside that moment in which yesteryear meets nowadays; a complex time which goes beyond the notions of past, present and future” – Susana de Sousa Dias

“Tout pour moi devient allégorie.” – this is the quote from Baudelaire that opens the film Nocturne, filmed in former Yugoslavia. The film consists of three sequences filmed at night, fragments of everyday life in which war is invisible. The first one shows a gipsy meeting, the second shows a group of young people on a balcony unpacking a stereo, and the third concludes the film with archive images that show a woman in slow, blue tinted images. These scenes only relate to war through their allegorical interpretation. The directors seem to want to offer the viewers a large space for interpretation. The images of the gypsies celebrating can be read as images of a persecuted minority, or as a metaphor of a peaceful coexistence in society. A subtitle says: “Je ne vois qu’infini par toutes les fenêtres”. In Nocturne, window views open, literally, onto infinite worlds and interpretations.

“Frammenti Elettrici n. 4 e n. 5 Asia – Africa consists of archive images from the 70’s that show the social turmoil and social differences between people in several Asian and African countries. The images, filmed by amateurs, reflect the economic and social conditions in these countries before their development as touristic destinations, and the conditions of their people before they were affected by devastation and war. The images are indifferent to a suffering they seem to ignore, which has to be reanalysed under the light of the knowledge gathered from the distance of the present.” (Yervant Gianikian and Angela Ricci Lucchi) It’s the beginning of the 70’s and mass tourism replaces colonial expeditions. Super8 cameras replace the guns that marked their most well-known work, From the Pole to the Equator. After the surprise – for the first time, we are contemporary with these images and with the cars we come across in Pakistan and see in several news reports –, we find the filmmakers’ cinematographic gesture, at times poetic and at times political. On the one side, we are immersed in the fascination of the images and charmed by the hypnotic pace of the editing, and, on the other hand, in perplexity: beyond the beauty of these amazing and careful reframings of the images, doubt sets in. What if these tourists (ourselves, sometimes) were the heirs of those conquerors of time and space – our ancestors? In a tribute to those who were filmed, captured in those images, Gianikian and Ricci-Lucchi retain a vision, an attitude, which is a form of challenge. Whether we are in Indonesia, near the palaces destroyed a few years ago by the tsunami, or in Senegal, the eyes defend themselves, and sometimes, they accuse. In the meantime, new trophies appear, the pools are filled with people and business is done, as usual… – Bertrand Bacqué

A collection of children’s toys made from different materials: wood, metal, paper, fabric, chalk, plastic and wax. The film covers the period from the end of WWI until the 50’s. All the objects were found in the Dolomites, the mountain chain in the Eastern Alps, in Northern Italy, in a village which up until WWI was a part of Austria. The objects originate from Eastern Europe, Northern Italy, Russia and Japan. The common features between these objects from different regions are obvious. The collection is formed by categories: human, animal and vegetable world, of different sizes. The intrinsic quality of the objects reflects the historical period between Fascism, Nazism and the post-war period. The images are seen through a magnifying glass. From these wrinkled and damaged objects elements emerge, not only of the rural farming world, a world of agricultural work related to the animals and the woods, but also of the world of household tasks, related to the home and its spaces, a world of traditional craftsmanship and its trade. We also recognize elements of folklore and of popular and religious traditions. A catalogue of over 10,000 toys that survived the childhoods destroyed by the two World Wars, the miniaturization of humble materials by the threatening shadow of fascism always hanging over them. But what is the relation between the film and the directors’ work, who spent twenty years rewriting the history of the 20th century through the editing of documental and private archives, denouncing fascist and warmongering ideologies constantly on the verge of outbreak? Once again, the attempt of reductionist schemes, whether social, political or religious, through “innocent” toys. It was Roland Barthes who reminded us that other hands have used these toys, hands that disappeared, were hurt or instrumentalised by men’s insanity.

“A particle of dust is only perceptible to the naked eye. It’s the smallest subject about which it’s possible to make a film – it’s a means of disappearance and a criterion of perception. Wherever we go, it takes the best of us; wherever we turn, it follows us. It’s our past, our present and our future. It’s universal and has a name in every language. It keeps housewives busy, as well as scientists, inventors, artists and industrial sectors which are dedicated to it. It is accused of feeding worms and of causing diseases. It becomes the owner of what we own, it penetrates laboratories, it creates planets and galaxies. We are surrounded by it, it’s inside of us and we get rid of it. It nestles in the despair of its own existence”, wrote Bitomsky about his latest film. In examining several kinds of dust, including microscopic particles invisible to the naked eye, this film questions several scientists – botanists, biologists, meteorologists and astronomers – who conduct research into the sanitary and environmental consequences of dust, from sand storms in the Sahara, to Oklahoma’s Dust Bowl in the 30’s, to toxic dust generated in the collapse of the World Trade Centre. The phenomenological, philosophical and even artistic aspects of the culture of dust are explored in interviews with artists and collectors. By examining in detail something that surrounds us in our daily life, but to which we pay no attention, this film offers us a new perspective on the way in which it affects our body, the environment, and even the cosmos, allowing us to see the world in a new way.

Like a detective in a film noir, Bitomsky undertakes an investigation through movie frames and images, calling on memory and on the viewing of films that were seen and sometimes forgotten, that are here set apart from the sometimes derisory exercise of ‘excerpt’. Alfred Hitchcock’s Torn Curtain (1966) or Psycho (1960), Jacques Demy’s Une Chambre en Ville (1982), Robert Aldrich’s Kiss me Deadly (1955)… or less known B movies in which someone always dies. In the film, we can hear someone say, “Why does cinema need death, if it cannot show it? Cinema seems to be inseparable from death, from dying, from ceasing to exist. We can say that death is an axiom of cinema. Bazin called it the shroud of reality.”

“No investigation is innocent; the detective always ends up discovering something about himself. Returning to Argentina after spending several years in France, I visit the places of my cinephile adolescence: local movie theatres that were demolished or converted into arcades or discos. I also discover that Argentina was the last place where Falconetti (Dreyer’s Joan of Arc) and Le Vigan (the most brilliant supporting actor of the 30’s) lived. In following their trail, I was confronted with my own journey: by doing the reverse path, was I living that same mirage, starting again from the beginning?” – Edgardo Cozarinsky

Places are what cinematographic fiction needs in order to tell a story. In his studio, the filmmaker installed a monitor for the excerpts, and placed books, video tapes, a chess board, frame copies and postcards that produce a story, while his team of helpers reads, observes, manipulates, suggests and details. The commentary travels through the places: it describes or reconstructs a fragment, a sequence: the city in John Huston’s When the City Sleeps (1956), the building and the empty stairs in Fritz Lang’s M (1931), the corn field in Alfred Hitchcock’s North by Northwest (1959), the cabin in Charles Chaplin’s The Gold Rush (1925), the streets in Buñuel, the ruins in Rossellini, Raymond Depardon’s New York… places of action, essential theatres for the story to take place, imaginary or ‘real’ places, existing or constructed. “Il n’y a lieu que le lieu.”

“Let’s start here”, says the filmmaker, placing his hand over a plate: Rue du premier film – Auguste et Louis Lumière, 1894. They made the first movie. It was a documentary film. In a room, the filmmaker, surrounded by his film crew, goes through excerpts, quotes and frames, commands the cameras that show his device, and questions the reality of (and in) the movies and the theories associated to them. From Pare Lorentz’s The River (1938) and Atget’s photographs, to excerpts and images from Robert Flaherty, Robert Frank, Peter Nestler, Jean Vigo, Buñuel or Huston, the film is a reflection about documental cinema in seven chapters and an epilogue.

Session presented by the Association Os Filhos de Lumière, including the screening of films made by students from Escola Secundária de Serpa resulting from their work on the question ‘why move the camera?’; with Teresa Garcia and Pierre-Marie Goulet