Thursday April 8th - 8:00PM
92Y-Tribeca
200 Hudson Street
New York, NY 10013
In Walter Benjamin's essay "The Image of Proust" (1929)* he writes,
"all great works of literature either found a genre or dissolve one."
But sometimes they do both, simultaneously, as in the case of Morin
and Rouch's Chronicle of a Summer. In the very same process in which
these "special cases" introduce a genre--a new method for a new
form--they so perfectly execute its new rules as to render any
subsequent attempt immediately outdated*.
Chronicle of a Summer exploits the then brand-new audio-visual
technology, instantly bringing it to its artistic pinnacle, and
demonstrating a still-unmatched conceptual and technical virtuosity.
It both asks and answers all of the questions that would plague the
history of direct/cinema/verite for generations. What Morin and Rouch
understood then, exactly 50 years ago, was that the focus shouldn't be
a mystification with the tools or the subjects; but rather on the
confrontations and interventions this new technology allows. And this
is perhaps the main reason to look at the film again today.
Chronicle combines an all-star cast and crew, including anthropologist
and filmmaker Jean Rouch*, here teaming up with sociologist Edgar
Morin*; Marceline Loridan-Ivens in the "lead"; a very young Regis
Debray listed as "student"; the gorgeous handheld cinematography of
Michel Brault and Raoul Coutard; and all brought together and produced
by Anatole Dauman* and Argos Films.
--Chronicle of a Summer: Paris 1960 - Edgar Morin & Jean Rouch, 1961, 85 minutes
TOTAL RUNNING TIME: 85 minutes | BetaSP Projection
$10
Discussion with:
--Ayreen Anastos - filmmaker, professor; member of the 16 Beaver Group
--Jamie Berthe - PhD candidate at NYU; webmaster of maitres-fous.net
--Josh Glick - PhD candidate at Yale
http://www.redchannels.org/
http://www.doctruck.blogspot.
http://www.flahertyseminar.org
http://www.92y.org/92yTribeca/
*The title of this program is taken from the writings of Dziga Vertov.
*Benjamin is writing about Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time
(1927). He goes on to say it is "the result of an unconstruable
synthesis in which the absorption of a mystic, the art of a prose
writer, the verve of a satirist, the erudition of a scholar, and the
self-consciousness of monomaniac have combined in an autobiographical
work... Among these cases this is one of the most unfathomable. From
its structure, which is fiction, autobiography, and commentary in one,
to the syntax of endless sentences (the Nile of language, which here
overflows and fructifies the regions of truth), everything transcends
the norm."
*We might also think of films such as Dziga Vertov's Man with a Movie
Camera (1929), Chris Marker's La Jetee (1963) (also produced by
Dauman), and the list goes on...
*It was the third feature film directed by Jean Rouch, after Moi, un
Noir (1959) and The Human Pyramid (1961).
*Prior to directing Chronicle of a Summer, Edgar Morin wrote The
Cinema, or the Imaginary Man (1956) and The Stars (1957).
*Anatole Dauman produced films by Jean-Luc Godard, Chris Marker,
Nagisa Oshima, Alain Resnais, Volker Schlondorff, and Wim Wenders,
among others.
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