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LET'S GET LOST

LET'S GET LOST
Bruce Weber

Session Special September 9 at 20:30
with Chet's Romance Bertrand Fevre, 1989
Cesar for best short documentary
(in the presence of Bertrand Fevre)




Bruce Weber studied photography at the University Princeton, then at the New School for Social Research in New York. He exhibited in 1974 and became a popular fashion photographer in the late 70s, including blankets signing of the magazine "GQ". Photos fashion, portraits, snapshots of America, naked men, he seized - mainly black and white - anonymous as beginners (Marcus Schenkenberg, Tony Ward, Channing Tatum) and celebrity (Sean Penn, Louis Garrel). Several books together many of his shots.





Let's Get Lost 20 years. His birthday is also that of the death of his hero, the trumpeter Chet Baker. "Fallen" in May 1988, the window of his Amsterdam hotel, located within walking distance of Zeedijk, went the red light district known as a supermarket open powder. Legendary to the end, Baker is also dead on a Friday 13. Bruce Weber heard the news in the editing room. It was in the process of editing 90 hours of footage devoted to this man who was said to finish but that he had continued to lovingly directed for three years. The

fixette Weber on Chet dated to the early 80s. Him that each erotic Calvin Klein campaign, with blows of black and white sex and feeling machine, fell off on a vinyl copy of one of these albums by Chet 1955, whose cover was consistently due to the photographer William Claxton.

Fashion plate. Claxton had discovered the young Chet around 1953, although he tried his hand to make his first pictures. Chet, who was not only a bomb but gave off an aura photogenic quite alien, will be magnified by Claxton in white T-shirt, the epitome of cool. On each of his shots, he exudes a kind of happiness that is the very promise of Chet Baker sent to America from the fifties: a white jazz musician, handsome as a god, who had served in uniform, a young healthy guy sparkling. Baker was sold as a cliché: fashion plate of a new kind of James Dean by James Dean.

fans of hard bop, who saw him mainly to a pale imitator of Miles Davis, made him pay dearly for his audience of young girls wearing ponytails, white socks and petticoat, more interested in his physical player than this game indolent in below the heart, and this "voice of fieet" that was all years 50 and 60, a subject of fun in the jazz scene, and that are perceived as the last twenty-five years is invaluable. Inseparable from his breath caressing, she is desperate for a soft, murmuring My Funny Valentine skinned alive, a lonely My Ideal, a The Thrill is Gone damaged to medications. And indeed, the gifted Baker, who could not decipher a partition has never deigned to repeat his entire life, preferred, speed and women, heroin. A femme fatale for whom he had dropped everything - until dropping himself to the lowest gutter, teeth broken by dealeurs to whom he owed rounds (like any junkie, Baker has lied all his life , and this episode has been at least a dozen alternate versions).

Whatever Bruce Weber came to listen to an evening of 1986 (the Long Night of Chet Baker - essential biography, translated in May Denoël-Joelle Losfeld - James Gavin Weber describes wearing a bandana out of a limousine surrounded by his court of assistants, models and hip), into a box of moth-ravaged New York: at 54, he looks like a rag. He has been trying for ten years to relearn how to breathe and sing with dentures that often betrays. His long hair and lint, his thin crevice of drug, its premature wrinkles, sad dog in his eyes, giving the appearance of a convict. Suffice to say that for a guy like Weber, with a sensitivity erotic unusual and romantically attracted to anything that falls under the crack, Chet has never been beautiful in the state.

The idea for a movie, to be born that night, becomes a real project of a fashion photographer: back gains photos of Claxton, black and white Romantic languid poses a being taciturn and unfathomable that finds solace as at women (and the cover where Chet is shirtless head resting against the hip of his second wife, Halem), by adding to the hypodermic syringe and the process of self-destruction as the main character.

Pop star. Let's Get Lost is, as such, a manifesto of the false connection: watch this angel 50s, then look at the picture later, Chet broken. Is not that exactly the same scent of the sublime, but taken against the light? If Claxton had given in 1954 a California version of Chet Baker Weber grabbed a European hard as we fantasized in Milan, Paris or Antwerp, shrouded in tragedy. Chet was the first American pop star. The movie was for him a tomb, a few hours before. Assumed: May 21, 1988, Weber in person will organize and settle the funeral of the musician.

Philippe Azouri

Kit Release:



Variations:
Elisabeth Caumont: "Chet Baker My Love"

Jazz in Paris
by Thierry Jousse

On Elevator to the Gallows Louis Malle in Around Midnight by Bertrand Tavernier, back on half a century of film strongly influenced by jazz.

This story certainly goes by the musical theater, or more generally by the image, and continues today in other forms. Towards the second half of the 1950s, under the leadership of a key figure, Marcel Romano, first timer to the Club Saint-Germain (6th), powered producer and organizer of sessions, a series of soundtracks recorded for French films were produced in Paris. This is the time when jazz is modern music par excellence, even fashionable, and where it represents a power change, a new path, a new sound, a new image, a new wave somehow.

Elevator to the Gallows



The film is emblematic of that era obviously Elevator to the Gallows Louis Malle with this legendary session wrapped up in a night in which Miles Davis surrounded by Kenny Clarke, Barney Wilen, Rene Urtreger and Pierre Michelot, bass immortal music climate nocturnal wanderings of Jeanne Moreau and Maurice Ronet on the Champs Elysees (8th). The circumstances of this recording fantasy worth recalling briefly. While Miles Davis was on tour in Europe, Louis Malle contacts the trumpet, through Marcel Romano, to propose a collaboration. Miles agreed, provided they can work on the subject and the gates to his hotel where he owns a piano. From there, the musicians, in conditions equivalent to those of silent film, literally improvise before the images. The black and white head-Henri Decae operator and night atmosphere of the film will be forever associated with music, both tragic and padded, the quintet of Miles Davis. Louis Malle, fully aware of the impact of music on his film, said later: "The music has contributed to the success of the film. She gave her tone, atmosphere, and when I say atmosphere is at sense of the term. In the film, there is a kind of overall tone, a kind of atmosphere that the music of Miles maintains an end to the other and gives it its unity. "(Jean-Louis Ginibre, 30 years of cinema ( 6), elevator and large knife, Jazz Magazine, No. 70, May 1961, p. 35)

This resounding success and will serve as a detonator for a model number of filmmakers of the era, including Edouard Molinaro applying to Art Blakey and his Jazz Messengers to compose music Women disappear



or Barney Wilen, surrounded including trumpeter Kenny Dorham's faithful and Kenny Clarke, burn the soundtrack of A witness in the city , or Roger Vadim who commits The Modern Jazz Quartet for its second film, You never know, and for his Dangerous Liaisons , rereading the novel by Laclos modernized, uses Thelonious Monk and Art Blakey again and his Jazz Messengers that Moreover we see on screen in a sequence of celebration.

At the turn of the years 1950-60, jazz is in fashion: it is a sign of youth against the backdrop of fascination for America, but it also produces music that, more than forty years later, sometimes Aged less than the images they accompany.

Around Melville
The other influential figure of French cinema of this period is certainly Jean-Pierre Melville. With Bob the Gambler , Melville invented a new style of French film noir, which announces the New Wave, which, without the music either directly or improvised rhythmic, similar to the climate of jazz. For his next film, Two Men in Manhattan , His one and only American incursion, he appealed to Christian Chevallier and Martial Solal, two French musicians closely related to jazz, to compose the soundtrack of a work and feverish night that installs definitely his style.

For Two Men in Manhattan , Melville is not content also not the simple musical accompaniment, he makes jazz a concrete and carnal presence, through scenes in Capitol studios or boxes which occur a few orchestras.
In virtually every movie he realized then throughout the 1960s, jazz and nightclub scene will be like a trademark, linking this music, mostly written by French composers like Paul Misraki important (Le Doulos), Francois de Roubaix (The Samurai) or Eric Demarsan (red circle) to film noir to the French as Melville emblematising. Melville is also to act as an intermediary with Godard and advise him to appeal to Martial Solal to the music of Breathless.

The meeting here is important. Although Solal confess, many years later, that Godard was probably very little personal affinity with jazz, it is recognized that the combination image and music here is especially symbiotic. The art of syncope, some form of improvisation, style and natural comedians, the immediacy and unpredictability of Breathless is in perfect harmony with the music rhythm, poetic, panting Martial Solal.

After the 1960
Over the decades 1960-70, or 1980, the history of jazz in Paris continues of course, but spends less directly by the cinema and even the image. Diaspora of free jazz tenor - Don Cherry, Archie Shepp, Steve Lacy, The Art Ensemble of Chicago ... Sunny Murray - who all passed through Paris at one time or another, or even settled, it recorded decisive albums, including the label BYG-Actuel, but there were virtually no shot. Any activity carried out around the American Center in Paris from the 1960s would have deserved more real images and documents seized on the spot. It was not until the 1980s and the success of the Jazz Festival in Paris to find pictures and filmed concerts, especially under the camera of Frank Cassenti which, alongside a career as a fiction filmmaker, became at that time a sort of permanent refer multiple concerts in Paris and takes the torch prestigious Jean-Christophe Averty who two decades ago, filmed many French jazz musicians and U.S. ORTF



The 1980s also marked a slight revival of jazz in film but on a more nostalgic. This is obviously the film by Bertrand Tavernier Round Midnight , which is the highlight of the retro wave. Inspired by the end of life Bud Powell in Paris, Tavernier stages the saxophonist Dexter Gordon, as an emblematic figure of a musician in exile, facing Francis (Francois Cluzet), inspired by Francis Paudras who was a friend of Bud Powell and filmed in her daily life as evidenced its mounting Archives, Dance of the infidels.

With Around midnight, Tavernier makes a beautiful tribute to this gesture of American musicians in Paris refugees, host city and music, and temporarily closed the story that can be also involve the return of Martial Solal with actors Bertrand Blier and the beautiful short film by Bertrand Smith, Chet's romance, where the figure of Chet Baker, one last time, magnified by a black and white mythological ...

Thierry Jousse

Chet's Romance Bertrand Fevre, 1989 Cesar for Best Short Documentary: Chet Baker (tp), R. Del Fra (b)
Paris 1987 - Photos © J. Madani

Some photographs of William Claxton: (click to enlarge)






to Go Further:

RADIO JAZZ:

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Ikusa Otome Suvia Vidio

Gomorra

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GOMORRA
Matteo Garrone



With Gomorrah, his novel published in 2006-survey on the Neapolitan mafia, the Italian journalist Roberto Saviano, 28, who works for La Repubblica and L'Espresso, has suddenly become a rich man (one million copies sold in Italy, about thirty translations) and a hunted prey. The Camorra, the furious hype around the book, has directly threatened to kill Saviano and now lives under heavy police protection, forced to continually change their place of residence. Her book paints a broad picture, and fed well documented numerous examples of the phenomenon of sprawling system Neapolitan economy, taking its rise since the activities of local clans of Campania to spread across Europe and until now 'China. For Saviano, one of the keys to understanding the Camorra, is precisely its ability to globalize, to do joint ventures with other underworld (European or African). In an interview with Cafebabel site, he declared: "The first city as the Italian mafia gave completely governed by a clan abroad, was Castel Volturno [Campania], licensed to "Raptors", a mafia clan of Lagos and Benin City in Nigeria. "

voltage. No doubt the success of the book called naturally a film adaptation, but it is nevertheless paradoxical, since reverse in the field of fiction incriminating evidence collected in reality. Stripping, by writing, the underworld of his will more or less bombastic, noting also how the chieftains are themselves fascinated by pictures of models (Scarface De Palma remains a behavioral matrix absolute), Gomorra the film, produces a curious effect of the blow. It galvanizes by springs specific to genre cinema, while attempting to synthesize five intersecting stories most of the speeches of the book. This tension between imagery, that is to say, the brightness of the graphic violence and the need of the information with what it implies back chilled through the film and will never disappear completely, even if the Filmmaker Matteo Garrone is careful not to sign, under the guise of indignation Civic, yet another clip of recruitment to join the ranks of lacanaille.

All the characters are also fully ejected or crushed by a feeder system and vampire, fattening its members to better drain after a cycle of disease. The mechanics of the corruption of values, as destruction of men who are alienated workers, affects both the aging Don Ciro - the distributor of the good works of the mafia in providing dropper her mite rotten - that Toto the boy of 13, that the circumstances lead to commit a despicable act. Naples, the port, Bay, the city and alleys of black stones, the filmmaker shows nothing, preferring to stick to the populous suburbs, including Scampia and incredible apartment blocks communicating with each other by bridges of concrete, real supermarket heaven open drug scene where, according to Saviano, a clan can win up to 500,000 euros per day.

Toxic. But these maneuvers us into the neighborhood soon in two more circles wider economic, gangrene of the legal sectors. The history of the tailor Pasquale can relay the chapters most virulent book about the links between major Italian fashion houses and hundreds of contractors funded by dirty money from the Camorra. Awareness of young graduate Roberto pulled strings in the service of a corrupt businessman, describes the ecological disaster caused by the mafia who raided the area of recycling of toxic waste. The countryside of southern Italy is transformed by their good care of all dump carcinogenic poisons from the European Union. Full of well-drawn characters and clever situations, the film lacks, however, that breath that would have, for example, allowed to rise to a panorama of universal greed, involving tainted circles of the underworld and the greed of capitalism unleashed.
Didier Peron

PRESS:


"... No Sponsors have had no qualms about burying poisonous waste in their own villages, to let it rot in lands adjacent to their houses or fields. Life is short of a sponsor and the reign of a clan, threatened by settling, arrest and imprisonment, can not last long. Saturate an area of toxic wastes, its surrounding villages in the hills of garbage is a problem when considering power as a social responsibility in the long term. Time business does not know him, that the short-term profit and no brake. Most of the traffic knows only one direction: north-south. Then from the late ninety, eighteen thousand tons of waste from Brescia were buried between Naples and Caserta in four years, one million tonnes Santa Maria Capua Vetere. The treated waste to the north, in factories in Milan, Pavia and Pisa, are all shipped in Campania ... "
Roberto Saviano (Gomorra)

Some will even speak of a sacrifice. To have done a remarkable job, Robert Saviano, 28, was sentenced to death. "freelance journalist, active in the Italian press and internet, he worked in the past newspapers such as Il Corriere del Mezzogiorno or Il Mattino. He now works for the weekly L'Espresso. Not until then did he tried to write a book. That is, since last year, done. Resulting in one of the biggest bestsellers in recent decades in Italy: more than one million copies sold to date. A work in turn became a bestseller in Spain (150 000) and Germany (200 000).

The "fault" by Roberto Saviano Gomorra called. In the empire of the Camorra. The book tells the story of the Neapolitan Mafia in recent decades, it has been witnessed in part by investigating the field. This story is done without self-censorship, that is to say by giving the names of all sponsors. All names. An avalanche of details included in a loop in the media, which has sickened a system accustomed to the omerta. The author has been working on a detailed description of this world. Everything is told in a style edge. The cry "weakens" While taking over a book denouncing a Neapolitan who saw his father fall victim to the Camorra as the story of a neutral journalist. The book is nevertheless exceptional, as shown in all the reactions in Italy. Mobilization to support R. Saviano, after his conviction killed by the Camorra, but took some time to occur. It took the intervention of great Italian intellectuals, beginning with that of Umberto Eco: "After the Rushdie case and that of Robert Redeker, it seems we can no longer express his ideas. And if, for Rushdie Redeker, the murderer could come from anywhere, we know that threat Saviano. It is important not to abandon it, "said the writer. The policies followed that call. The journalist, who now resides in Rome, is now protected, as are usually anti-Mafia judges. While acknowledging that "the Camorra has a memory Elephant and unlimited patience
Antoine Aubert (Non Fiction)

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION:

Biutiful Cauntri
a documentary by E. Calabria, A. Of Ambrosio, P. Ruggiero
(in November Renoir for the month of DOC.)



Ranchers who are losing their sheep.
Farmers who cultivate land more and more polluted. 1200
abusive discharge of toxic waste.
We're in Italy in the Naples area. In the background, a mafia contractors using trucks and metal buckets instead of guns ...

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Bathtub Rubber Mats In Los Angeles Stores

Carte Blanche
Jean Pierre THORN
Friday 5 September 2008 in his presence.


"Yalla Go!" monitoring of "back to the wall"



Jean-Pierre Thorn seems to have a unique relationship with time. In 1968, he threw himself alone at first, with a small camera Pathe Webo and a tape recorder not synchronous, in the heart of the strike by workers at Renault-young Flins, before being joined and supported by talented technicians (Bruno Muel, Antoine Bonfanti, Yann Le Masson ...). Thanks to Jean-Luc Godard, he shoots in May 1969, four copies of Dare to struggle, dare to win and it saves one of his comrades of the Maoist People's Cause, which, following a court "popular", describe the film "liquidator". It was not until 1978 that Dare struggle, dare to win real traffic, in a program established in 1968 by the author. A year later, Jean-Pierre Thorn withdrew his film distribution networks. The withdrawal lasted twenty years.

Meanwhile, between 1969 and 1978, the filmmaker has made worker, "established" plants Alsthom of Saint-Ouen. A few months after leaving the factory in October 1979, the sit-down strike, as required, then explodes. His comrades seek, Jean-Pierre Thorn back with his camera and his film friends (which, again, Bruno Muel), he emerges with his back to the wall (1980), probably his masterpiece, one of the best films in any event on a workers' strike. It was probably at that time, a priori, that Jean-Pierre Thorn seems to have been the more "synchronous".
For his first fiction, I've got you under the skin narrating the life of a Communist trade unionist, a former nun who committed suicide after his exclusion and "the arrival of the Left in Power (1981), could not out in 1990 in a political context radically different (and completely heartbreaking). It also had a significant contribution to the public failure of the film. After Generation Hip Hop or the movement of ZUP (1995) and Angels Make Kifer (1996), we can understand the deep nostalgia that crosses were not registered bike (2002), centered on the personality and destiny of Bouda, Hip Hop dancer whose career was shattered by the application of double and triple penalty. In fact, through the work of Jean-Pierre Thorn, between rage and bitterness, nostalgia pierces or violent secret that reflects moments lost and unfinished: the strike we would have won if ... the career he might have done if ... Implicit in this discourse is probably hiding the director's own cracks: Revolution or strikes that would have won, the other films I should have done ... But it is precisely this nostalgia and in this bitterness, in this meantime, what has built the work of the filmmaker.

own titles of its three main documentary also refer to developments of our time: an attitude of conquest of the working class (or those who want to be his heralds) to an attitude defensive, an attitude of defense of the working class once imagined, and now so badly, in an attempt to survival of young from working class backgrounds. Inside-of his work, Jean-Pierre Thorn, editor himself, excelled in some of his films, by the time it establishes. Dare to struggle, dare to win, which the assembly is molded of Eisentein theories, is well beyond even the pamphlet (very) dogmatic, a beautiful epic. The back wall, inspired by the ideas of direct cinema expressed in particular by Barbara Kopple in his masterpiece Harlan County USA, introduces him, another report in time. Here of historical narrative leading to a revolutionary incantation and prophecy angry, but real work on the time of the strike and its actors (leading to a bitter conclusion). Meanwhile Jean-Pierre Thorn has actually known the time of factory work, and if his sincerity is always absolute, it has greatly increased the quality of listening, dialogue and observation - the wages necessary documentary work. (From this angle the first fiction of Jean-Pierre Thorn seems to be a regression, as the irruption of reality and time dilation does not appear to have a place in the juxtaposition of color prints and the pageant).

Jean-Pierre Thorn also appears as a filmmaker in his relation to space. All the space of Dare to struggle, dare to win stands in the factory compound and its relationship with the outside, the two worlds are separated by fences. We find a similar geography in the back wall - and Similar scenes (up stairs of the factory workers on strike). Between two space-worlds, between the factory workers and reinvest outside the yellow link where threatening and CRS, always pierce the nostalgia of a cons-attack almost militarized, fiction, and the temptation to organization of violence, a reconquest of the world beyond the physical and symbolic barriers. The world of factories and workshops is one of the fathers of children of hip-hop, they have a horizon HLM bars, gates and gateways of the RER, roofs and basements of large groups. When the young dancers are not registered bike perform their choreography is enclosed within four walls, bounding and rebounding in a confined space. Any work of Jean-Pierre Thorn tends to reclaim and expand the space, breaking the walls, climb and catch up. Hence, generally, this immense feeling of bitterness.

In fact, some films of Jean-Pierre Thorn came out at an inopportune moment, the filmmaker and the citizens were often in symbiosis with their time, sometimes ahead of it. In the early 80s, then it is permanent union of the audiovisual section of the CFDT (before being ruled out of the confederacy), he is an early interest in creating video in relation to councils. It also organizes, managing to work the CGT and CFDT in Nantes and Saint-Nazaire, a video festival of labor organizations. Co-founder of ACID (Association for an independent film), Jean-Pierre Thorn has campaigned a lot in summer 2003, with rigor, to defend the regime of the entertainment at the expense of the release of his latest documentary. Jean-Pierre Thorn and those who prove by their actions and their films, even if it does not like the phrase, the words "filmmakers" and "activists" are sometimes incompatible. On the contrary.

Tangui Perron, in charge of heritage and film in Seine-Saint-Denis


Go Yallah!



The combination of a caravan for an ambitious mission to make women aware of their rights on each side of the Mediterranean. After crossing their path, Jean-Pierre Thorn decides to film their daily struggle. The director makes with a relevant staging a tribute to those humanists shade.

The caravan from Algeria, Morocco, France. They decided, by conviction and through their experiences, promote the cause of women by teaching them their rights. That would obviously turn a blind eye to pretend that such education is unnecessary, while in France die each year nearly 400 victims of domestic violence (according to The Right to Know, 1999, which also pointed the figure of 2 million battered women in France). Zorah Sadik and others, the "caravan", have decided to fight back gently, to promote discussion and education. Jean-Pierre Thorn was impressed, he decided on adopting a more discreet form of tribute to that fight. He films, simply, the caravan in action every day, going door to door, organizing meetings - debates ... It occurs only very little, leaving his subjects speak: they have much to say.

If expressed little direct manner, the director is present through much of the assembly. The film never stops to compare two caravans, one located in Morocco and one in France, in the region Lyon. The finding, the French side is overwhelming. Between a country still viewed as somewhat socially backward and the "country of human rights", the contrast looks often at the expense of France. It was in France that we find the most extreme women "anti-feminist," they are treated terribly macho culture and patriarchal. Faced with such attitudes, caravan are careful not to look down: the fight for women's rights has already seen enough of lecturing ... As always, they respond by listening and dialogue. Director not directly express their disapproval, and give their place to these views as to others. Remains for the viewer to form an opinion, which will, hopefully, no doubt.

Long and slow, the film by Jean-Pierre Thorn is a true statement, if not love, at least respect vis-à-vis the struggle of the caravan. It must certainly not less than two hours of film to make a worthy tribute to these women (and few men) fighting. The journey "education" is no caravan of superfluous, especially not when we know even today, atrocities such as female circumcision may remain unknown to many people, usually informed. A vision of Allez, Yallah!, We are surprised, feeling strange and unusual, to believe again that things can change, as the battle of the caravan is being conducted with faith and courage. Make and distribute this film is a tribute to barely adequate.

Vincent Avenel

Meet Zohra Sadik, one of the caravan;

Firstly, I want you to tell me about how the film was mounted. How Jean-Pierre Thorn, the director, he contacted you?
The director was present at the caravan, 2004 which was held here in Lyon by the AFCI - Association of Women against fundamentalism - that's how we made the acquaintance of Jean-Pierre Thorn . He filmed, we followed throughout the course of the caravan of Lyon. That's how he got the idea to follow the caravan to Morocco. And suddenly, as it organizes, Morocco, several caravans local or national, he had the idea of talking about this fight for women from a movie, just to pass all values, all principles, all the strength and all the will we have to get this society of equality.

Jean-Pierre Thorn is a very activist, he has great values. From your perspective, what do you get across with this film? Is it a testimony of what you have done, or is it a not on your road to the future?
In fact, it somewhat reflects our convictions, principles of our project, because we are going in the most remote areas to educate women, men and youth to feel connected, to mobilize them, so they are also involved in this fight. So this film, it makes a little show, but at the same time to mobilize. It's a way to see that there are women who argue, who have the will to change that. It reflects a little bit that hope, actually. We also hope it's true, we have a situation that is a little complicated, but we will be able to just overcome all these obstacles, to reach that women and men - because the fight is a fight women and men - will have this one. We talk through a film, so it allows you to ask questions. There are women who fight for rights, for equality, against fundamentalism, so it also allows others to be involved in this fight.

Hopefully, "Go, Yallah! "Will be a success other than the success of esteem. Have you any other media projects in parallel? In fact
media projects, we have caravans that organizes this year, and we will organize une autre caravane dans la zone du nord du Maroc, vers la ville de Tanger. C’est une activité qu’on organise chaque année. En même temps, l’objectif, ce n’est pas seulement d’arriver dans ces villages pendant 10 jours ou bien une semaine, parce que c’est tout un travail qui se fait pendant les caravanes. Il y a des questionnaires pour connaître un petit peu la situation économique et sociale, les conditions de vie de ces personnes, au niveau de la santé : ça nous permet d’avoir des données concrètes qui pourront servir à mener notre combat, de plaider vis-à-vis de l’État, vis-à-vis des responsables, pour que ça change. C’est en parallèle with all the work being done for education, for information on all matters concerning the law, whether for men, women or youth. And at the same time, it also monitors these caravans: I want to say that this is not an occasional activity, but it is an activity among others in the association, and just after the caravan ago Always follow up. In all regions where you organize caravans there are people of LDDF, the Democratic League for Women's Rights, which ensure that followed there. We have several projects: course of study, but we have another project and I think it very important too, because he joined a little concept of the caravan, who joined a little strategy is the School of Equality and Citizenship, which is about Casa and aims to give training for teachers, as part of associations, and also to young people. The School of Equality and Citizenship is therefore a program that is very interesting: the history of religions, the history of slavery, gender, communication, history of fighting for women So all this makes a bit of training teachers. You know that teachers have a direct relationship with students: it will have an impact, obviously it will impact on attitudes. We have several projects in the future.

As part of the caravan which was filmed for "Go, Yallah! "Is that it changed anything for you to have the presence of camera crews to side? Is it does not create the hostility, mistrust from the people you meet?
all, not at all. People were confident. Why? Because we, before going on site, before starting the caravan, here we go, we work with people, it organizes sites clean, they are encouraged to come to the caravan, so already there is a prior contact that makes it possible to trust people. So in no case was felt a reluctance on the part of people.

And yourself? The team caravan? It has not changed your behavior?
When you are on hand when you're in action, it is not there a. .. I mean, when you're right in the action, we are not careful there's a movie. It was not really a film: it is there, it works. I do not pay attention to Jean-Pierre, I do not know what he shot or not. He was with us, he followed us, yes, but in no case was this thought that this is a movie.

Do you think you own the caravan could try to change attitudes in the French community?
No, I think there are many organizations working in the field. So we're not there to do the work of associations, which do good work. What is needed is that there be coordination broader discussion on the objectives. Because in fact, everyone working for equality, to citizenship, against fundamentalism ... Thus, each association is working in his corner: yes, there are the same goals, so that's why it takes a little work in coordination in order to achieve these goals. Not just in terms of associations, but at the social workers at the Ministry of Education, because everyone has some responsibility in this fight. So, so, as we caravan from Morocco, we can help, you can participate, but in no case can work to establish associations that are there. You can participate in activities they can learn from the experiences of Moroccan women, as it builds and it also benefits from the experience of French associations. It's actually a complement, more than an association came from Morocco. True, when we speak of the Maghreb in general, although there are North African associations to inform them, tell them that it happens, there is a trend here. That allows a little bit to contribute to these actions. I know there are organizations working in the field, but they must complement each other: it is very very important.

It's almost ten years that the existing caravan ...
association? Since 1993. But we started the caravan in 2002.

Got something for the future? Ideas, hopes?
course. When there is activity, there is always an assessment, a way of seeing, and certainly there's plenty to do, but there are still things that have been made. Home (note: Zohra Sadik was born in Morocco), for example, there were all fighting women's movement that made it a little bit changed the laws. There was the reform Code of Personal Status, there is the principle of equality that is now enrolled in the Family Code. We have acquired, but it is not enough for us, either at law or in attitudes. What we have so far in law is fine, we must also act on attitudes. So that, it's part of our project. Of course there is hope as we work on the ground, as we have belief, as we have goals, so we have principles, a strategy is safe we'll get there: there is hope. Otherwise ... it's not worth starting this fight.

One final note is that at the policy level too, there must still have a policy so that things change, either at the free entry of fundamentalists that whether at the level of education in law, whether at the level of equality, there must be a clear policy that has specific goals. We really there participation and contribution policy, or rather a real political will for the society to which we aspire all, because we can not talk about democracy without women's rights.

Interview by Vincent Avenel



The caravan of women's rights:

(click photo)

BACK WALL

documentary by Jean-Pierre Thorn, conducted in 1979, reports of the strike and occupation of Alsthom factory in Saint-Ouen. Jean-Pierre Thorn made his debut in métrange-1968 (Dare to struggle, dare to win) on the occupation Renault factory in Flins. It is thanks to Jean-Luc Godard that he draws, in May 1969, 4 copies of the film, but it really does not circulate until 1978.

Las theoretical discourse and intellectualizing on the workers, Thorn decided to become an "established" and a real commitment on the ground by joining Alsthom in 1971 (it is also in order to leave his library and discover the world as it is that Pierre Perrault, another figure of direct cinema, decided to shoot from the Ile-aux-Coudres, Quebec). He notes in this regard, the "cunning" executive who hired Alsthom leftists to destabilize the CGT. He will remain seven years with Alsthom, until 1978. It was some time after his departure in October 1979 that his former colleagues recalled filming the strike as expected and finally decided.

Thorn then returns with his camera and some film friends (including Bruno Muel, former Group Medvedkine) to capture the event. It is strongly inspired by the ideas of direct cinema, particularly by Harlan County USA by Barbara Kopple, a film about the miners' strikes of Kentucky in June 1973. He decides to make an anti-Dare to struggle, dare overcome it deems too simplistic and too cartoonish (the film contains repeated attacks against the "revisionism" CPF) to make a film deeply entrenched in the working world and its different forms (see Cinema over the wall in the complements). Back In The Wall, Thorn also really gives a voice to workers. At the opening of the film is a striker that we learn the situation of employees of Alsthom (41h30 of work per week, no 13th month, no pay increase, 4 weeks paid holiday ... ) and hence the legitimacy of their action.


From the first images of the film we are struck by the process of reclaiming the work by the striking workers at the expense of the Directorate and the "yellow" (not strikers). The doors are welded, the offices of "yellow" are covered with the same color paint, slogans and watchwords adorn the roof of the factory. The workers are also women and children come to visit their workplace, and this with some pride. The first moments of the film, which also correspond to the earliest days of the strike take place in an atmosphere of good natured, Full of hope and excitement. The plans are relatively long, the images "take their time." A voice recites the days go by. More time passes and as time seems longer. The days seem longer. Each day spent is both a victory and additional suffering. This film, really up in the heart of his narrative the notion of temporality of the strike and the ensuing sense contradictory: each worker strike is caught between pride and resist the fear of losing everything.

Thorn, still in its effort to enable speech to the workers, asked three strikers unorganized. They express their mistrust vis-à-vis trade unions (CGT too close to the PC, CFDT subject to the turf battles between leftist), their non-recognition in a political party and doubts about the communist ideal ("we n 'have no role model in the world "). Only 10 years after 1968, their claims are not limited to a material will ultimately individualistic and short to medium term, but the notion of ideal and utopia in the longer term appears to vanish. This passage is interesting about the future of the working world, and raises the question of politicization and its union. Question not so far from some current concerns.

time the film follows the time of the strike. This aspect is felt especially by the assembly produced by Thorn himself. The turn is the footage of the occupation of the Bourse in Paris (it really puts us in terms of workers, we feel their fear, anguish and then the explosion at the entrance to the Inside the temple of capitalism, all without effect editing, allowing time to develop; see discussion in Alain Nahum Additions). Gradually, as the film progresses, some images are repeated (The AG, the presence of CRS), the voice ticks off the days on strike is no longer present. The tension is palpable and the family is now excluded. The workers seem increasingly isolated.

Finally, after more than a month to strike (October 11 to November 26, 1979), the claims are far from being met, and defeat is bitter. Despite a last "International" full of rage (on a guitar rif destructed, as the Star Spangled Banner by Jimmy Hendrix exploded) in the factory yard, the disappointment is great. This seems to anticipate disillusionment with politics that is preparing the election of François Mitterrand in 1981, but also the evolution of the working world and its representation.

backs to the wall is ultimately true and beautiful film, with an "epic working" between the joys, disappointments, and betrayals own solidarity in the struggle. He joins more than ever especially our current concerns, as evidenced by the dialogue between a "yellow" and "red" at the factory gates: the first: "everyone has the right to claim, but within the law, without imposing what you want, "the second:" Have you ever received a single Satisfaction with Alsthom in legality? ".

Stéphane Bedin

10 years earlier:

June 10, 1968, return to work Wonder factory.




Jean-Luc Godard's "La Chinoise"




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