Sylvain George
interviewed by Olivier Pierre (English translation, FID 2010)
The origin of the project?These are the first images from a film I have been working on for the past four years, about migration policies in Europe and the social mobilizations they may set off. The idea is to try and give an account of the issues which I think are among the most crucial of our times. Indeed, issues related to immigration and the figure of the foreigner are perfect indicators to assess and question the state of our democracies, the building of public policies, the drawing up of their implementation procedures. At first, even though on paper the project already seemed substantial enough, it was supposed to be a two-part short film. Then, as I found myself facing the realities of the field, as I met people in Europe and Africa, the whole project expanded considerably. Now, there will probably be two feature-films. For instance, the film was supposed to start with the situation of migrants transiting in Calais, before showing other circumstances in Africa, Europe, … Initially, I had planned to stay in Calais for three months for that purpose. But because of the situations I discovered and the connections I developed with many people, I ended up staying for three years, through stays of various lengths, between July 2007 and January 2010. The “Calais part” gradually stood out and became independent from the rest of the film. It became a proper feature-film. It features many threads that will be drawn out, exploited and developed later on, in the second feature-film. The shooting of the latter is almost done, and the editing process is about to start.
What about the structure of the film, the editing?The film is made of autonomous sequences, fragments that refer and correspond to each other, that intermingle, thus creating temporality and spatiality effects. Since the shooting took three years, you can feel the cycle of seasons, without it being necessarily set up in chronological order. The same applies for situations that may or may not be treated chronologically, without time or narration necessarily matching a homogeneous, linear and empty conception of time. Indeed, the correspondence, the poetic and dialectic tension set between situations, events, people or “patterns” philosophically meet the building of some history that is still very much pregnant, linear and marked by the myth of progress, and that tends to foreclose times and issues in some permanent overtaking. Politically speaking, it is about standing up, contesting these grey zones, these spaces or cracks like Calais standing somewhere between the exception and the rule, beyond the scope of law, where law is suspended, where individuals are deprived, stripped off their most fundamental rights. And that while creating, through some dialectic reversal, the “true” exceptional states. Space-time continuums where beings and things are fully restored to what they were, are, will be, could be or could have been. The question of redemption was redefined in the 20th century as a category that was’t religious, but rather political and aesthetical (Rosenzweig, Benjamin). Aesthetically speaking, I try to operate a rereading, and updating of allegory: neither baroque nor modern, but that I would call contemporary.
How was the shooting with migrants in Calais?As a director, I follow a certain number of rules that are always evolving. First, I take the time to carefully set a frame as clearly as possible. I introduce myself, explain who I am, what I’d like to do, what kind of film it is. I spend time with people. I never film them without their knowing, nor do I steal images, etc. These rules, which are in no way dogmas, may seem simple and obvious. However, given what you see out there, they are simply revolutionary, they have to do with ethics and of course politics, Take Calais, for instance, as the film is set there. The city is a permanent film set. It is a place much exposed politically, where politics are obvious. As a result, there is always a film or still camera somewhere, a notepad… That goes from a student in journalism, to big-budget films like Welcome, or television crews, documentary directors… Generally, as regards prevailing cinematographic or journalistic practices, the end justifies the means. One should stop at nothing to get an image: befriending migrants, paying for interviews, hiding in the bushes.. My own conception of cinema and my position as an individual and a director are completely at odds with that, with such narrow-mindedness and ethnocentrism. Cinema isn’t an end in itself, it cannot just shut down on itself. It is an endless means to build a connection, a relationship to the world, to establish dialectic links with yourself and the world, and thus to assert your singularity. Cinema can introduce mobility with steadiness; break with determinism of all sorts, and set a profound movement of emancipation going. Standing by all these principles, I never had any problem with the migrants. Quite the opposite. When you build a relationship based if not on trust, at least on honesty and respect, you can really connect with people and film them, as well as facts and unexpected situations.
The film is deliberately descriptive, but it also uses some effects that give it its original form.I think that the technique – and the camera is a technical tool – can allow to explore and develop the potentialities and virtualities within nature and mankind. Therefore you have to use all the resources your chosen medium – here, the camera – has to offer, to actualize those virtualities. They are never used for their own sake then, or as ends in themselves (an image for an image, an effect for an effect), as opposed to a countless number of films, especially those on immigration that have been really common lately, in which the filmed subject only becomes a pretext for symbolic experimentations and aesthetic experiments: an aestheticization of reality. An aestheticization of politics. But is rather according to the situations and subjects that you meet and film, to the way you perceive a context, an atmosphere, the feelings you might feel, that you find it a good idea to make use of such and such “technique”, such and such “effect”: play with the speed of frames, slow motions, accelerations, superimpositions, freeze frames etc.
Why did you choose again to shoot in black and white?Because this allows me to work and to question the concepts of document, archive, preservation. Because doing so establishes a historical distance from displayed events that are in keeping with what’s very important, what’s indeed very red hot news. A dialectic of near/far therefore unfolds and established itself. The more you move things away, the closer they actually get. Black and white also conjures up an aesthetic and poetic dimension fully relevant to the film. The dimension is akin to elegy, although there are some nuances here awaiting further specification. However cohesive as a whole, you’ll find various types of black and white in the film, allowing to generate shifts and weave metaphors. For instance, you’ll get some overexposed sequences where whites are burnt out and black very deep. This again is consistent with numerous testimonies given by migrants; in these, they repeatedly refer to having felt like survivors, as though burnt out, scorched, consumed from within. Obviously, you also think of the “burning fingers” scene, which graphically shows that those migrants being literally “branded” like cattle by the current immigration policy beyond a mere image or metaphor.
Other choices are obvious as well, like the absence of commentary, the only voices being those of the migrants and that of the State. Indeed, in no way I want to make a didactic film, or to treat this issue they way a journalist would, by enumerating facts and giving so many explanations. I seek to illustrate, without being comprehensive, some realities which seem crucial to me; this I do via images, sounds, words which spring out with tremendous force. In order to do so, I endeavor to be as available and attentive to what may happen as I can possibly be. I may have a few hunches before getting on the field, but these are swiftly made irrelevant during shooting and then editing. My ambition is primarily to learn and comprehend what’s taking place. So I choose to be on the lookout for persons, situations, places, and to be ready to record and welcome anything coming my way, be it testimonies, actions, objects, feelings… For the first time I have also used voice-over in the film, not so much to bring extra factual info but rather to generate distance, to play on other layers of temporalities, to open up the times and film to anything that may go through it, that may pierce it and shatter it, whether old or new. Thus, two or three times in the film, in some discreet, imperceptible way, you can hear a “voice from outside”, that of Valérice Dréville actually, who, in a murmuring voice, repeats some words actually uttered by migrants. At some other points, she speaks a poetic sentence as an echo to the second quote that concludes the film, inspired by political slogans heard during demonstrations of “sans-papiers” in the U.S. back in 2006.
Lastly, during the final credits, you’ll hear some “singing from the Outside”, in this case Archie Shepp’s voice, humming Strange Fruit. Potential links with bygone times are therefore suggested by the cover of this very eloquent, powerful song, and by the very person that sings it. The fact that this was recorded with the actual camera used for the shooting, like all the other elements present in the film, underlines the free-jazz dimension of the whole film.
more interviews:
www.fragil.org (FR)
www.mouvement.net (FR)
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quarta-feira, 27 de outubro de 2010