Cinéma du réel catalogue 2020

Cinéma du réel 2020 (Cahiers du réel)

What Is Not Seen (by the Self)

By Fernand Deligny

THE ERA OF THE IMAGE

We don’t live in the age of the image, regardless of what they say.
The era of the image! Even though we have never been further from the image. We’re in the century of language, of chitchat, of verbalised reproduction, of unbridled speech. One has no choice but to talk. The image is what Janmari, the autistic child in Ce Gamin, là (That Kid, There), understands; it’s his mode of thinking, he for whom there is no language. . . .In my life, I’m constantly grappling with this absence, this vacancy, this mode of thinking apart.
It’s evident that these children, who have no use of language, think. They need to be left in peace, but the Institution can’t handle that. It can’t handle the absence of language, and nothing can be done about this. We need there to be language somewhere or we’re lost.
People cling to the characteristic of language that preserves their singularity in relation to the animal. . . An old fear . . .

THE IMAGE, THE ANIMAL

Now, it may be that the image is part of the animal kingdom. . . .This is no doubt very much the case: The image lies deep within the purview of the memory of the species, and the memory of the species is something that all species have in common, including the human species. . . People can’t handle that. I don’t know why we can’t handle the human species being taken, in the literal sense of the term, why we regard it as a species unlike the others that . . .
The image is the means by which the species persists despite everything. . . It’s a trace . . . a trace that awaits, on the lookout. . .
This is part of what cinema entails; that is, an immediate enthusiasm. And we don’t know why, but we’re moved by what we end up calling images, which are not the effect of language; images move us in a way that goes well beyond language. . . There are some who have managed this—whether they realise it or not. . . The Tramp is one of them, of that there is no doubt: his images move us immediately, and very deeply; they overtake everyone.
There is no reason for it, no reason . . . particularly because in a work of cinema, the images are not on the film, so to speak; they are not inside it; they occur between the person who filmed the work and the one who watches it. It’s a phenomenon that occurs ‘between’ and you can’t master it. . .

THE WORLD OF IMAGES

This is the difference between acting and doing. When we do something it’s intention, it’s language: We do the prep work to make soup, we do the dishes, we do whatever you like. An autistic kid doesn’t do anything: It’s the act. This is very clear to see. This is seen by whoever has a trained eye, by whoever lives with autistic kids. The same is true of the image: In my jargon, an image is not ‘made’. An image arrives, is nothing but coincidence. . .
Now, being coincidence, the image as I understand it, the distinctiveness of the image, is autistic. I mean it doesn’t talk. The image doesn’t say anything! And . . . just as with autistic children, this is yet another reason for everybody to make them say whatever they like. . . The image, too, is used as a scapegoat. . .

THIS IS CINEMA, IT’S WHAT IS NOT SEEN (BY THE SELF)

Is That Kid, There a documentary or a work of fiction? It’s a genuine documentary. And for good reason: you can’t get Janmari to do anything other than what he does every day. One couldn’t make more of a documentary than that. And it makes the film a fictional work because folks have never experienced anything like it. It’s neither documentary, nor fiction; it’s the customary, this customary being so real that it surprises . . . the ultra customary surprises: that is, surprise can come from what is not seen (by the self). A gesture to reach for a piece of bread can surprise if you manage ‘to film’ what is not seen (by the self) in the gesture, and is there in such a way that the self perceives what it would not have seen.
Why is this cinema? Because it is not seen . . . I mean reaching for a piece of bread is very common, folks do it all the time, so they perceive it tacitly, but it’s not verbal expression, or doesn’t end up as such.
This is cinema: It’s coming to the aid of all the jerks who believe they can see, while what they see is zilch; they don’t see anything. . . The task of cinema lies here, the urgency of cinema is this: to revive that which among them is numbed, dazed, squandered, overnourished.

THE IMAGE TAKER’S JOB

The verb ‘to film’ took just like that . . . it’s always made me uncomfortable. . . I’m well aware that what we’re dealing with here is the making of a film, but how is it that the material became the verb? ‘To film’ is truly an infinitive that doesn’t fit, and infinitives mustn’t be squandered. . . .Does one say that a hen has ‘egged’? Care must be taken so words don’t become ill. . .
A tool is often something that can become a verb: ‘hammer’, ‘to hammer’ . . . ‘camera’, ‘to camer’. . .
‘Ethics’ remains a nebulous word . . . like ‘image’, like ‘asylum’. It’s a word I had never used—until I read Wittgenstein. According to him, ethics is ‘the desire that drives us to run against the boundaries of language’. . . Well, that’s exactly what the image taker’s job is, their essential job—to be impregnated with the idea of exceeding the boundaries of language and not be subjugated to whatever symbolic system you like. This is ethics.
. . . Cahiers du Cinéma . . . Bazin’s articles . . . by chance I come across a quote by Malraux: ‘. . . the means of connecting the person to the world by a means other than language.’ For Malraux, this is cinema. And this, too, reassured me quite a bit. . . When it comes to my stories about images, I’m not that much of an oddball, I’m not entirely alone. . .
As I see it, there is a tradition that was interrupted by the popularity of psychoanalysis and other modes of thinking in which language is . . . everything. . . And regardless of what they say, we don’t live in the age of the image. . .

Interview by Serge Le Péron and Renaud Victor, Les Cahiers du cinéma, February 1990). This text appears in its entirety in Fernand Deligny. Œuvres, Ed. L’Arachnéen, 2017

Translated by Sarah Moses