Autour de Pierre Falardeau : found footage et réemploi d'images dans le cinéma politique

Ce mémoire portera sur le réemploi d’images dans le cinéma politique d’une manière générale dans un premier temps, puis plus spécifiquement dans l’oeuvre du cinéaste québécois Pierre Falardeau. Il s’agit donc d’abord de regarder comment, d’un point de vue historique, l’image fut réemployée dans le cinéma documentaire classique. Il sera ensuite question de la réutilisation de l’image à des fins politiques dans le cinéma expérimental à travers une analyse du found footage film. Dans un deuxième temps, nous verrons le réemploi d’images dans le cinéma militant, engagé politiquement (voire révolutionnaire) dans le cinéma d’Amérique latine (Santiago Alvarez, Fernando Solanas et Octavio Getino) et en France (Guy Debord, Chris Marker et Jean-Luc Godard). Par la suite, nous verrons comment Pierre Falardeau recyclera des images principalement dans trois de ses documentaires : Pea Soup, Speak White et Le temps des bouffons. Nous allons voir où il se situe dans les différentes traditions de réemploi d’images que nous avons vu précédemment et comment il se rapprochait et se distinguait de ses prédécesseurs.

Found Footage, mouvement cinématographique contemporain

Ce travail a pour objet le found footage, analysé en tant que pratique de recyclage culturel et comme important mouvement cinématographique de notre époque. L’étude trace d’abord un parallèle entre la fabrication du film d’images trouvées et le processus de recyclage industriel. Ensuite, le travail aborde les influences artistiques de ce mouvement du cinéma expérimental initié dans les années 1960, qui s’intensifie de plus en plus depuis l’avènement des dernières technologies numériques. En dernier lieu, l’étude propose une mise au point sur le found footage à l’ère des technologies numériques, en analysant les causes et conséquences de la (re)montée du mouvement, et en tenant compte de sa présence qui se multiplie sur l’Internet, par le biais du mashup.

The monstrous archive. Aesthetics of decay and horror in found footage films

Ce texte a été présenté à la table ronde « Contested Footage: Snuff, Disease, the Avant-Garde, and the Archive » lors du congrès annuel de la PCA/ACA (Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association) qui se tenait à la Nouvelle-Orléans, du 1er au 4 avril 2015. La participation à ce congrès s’inscrivait dans le cadre du projet de recherche « Archives et création : nouvelles perspectives sur l’archivistique » sous la direction d’Yvon Lemay. Ce projet est financée par le Conseil de recherches en sciences humaines du Canada (CRSH) dans le cadre du programme Savoir (2013-2016).

Recovering the hidden through found-footage films

In the early nineteen seventies materialist experimental film was cogently rejected by feminist theorists for its inability to deliver a feminist counter-cinema addressing its political agenda. The concomitant development of feminist psychoanalytic readings of “dominant cinema” against its grain also discounted such work. This split is marked by Peter Wollen’s formulation of “two avant-gardes”, one narrative and explicit about its political position and the other non-narrative and focusing directly on implicit perceptual processes. Materialist film’s fixation on structure jettisoned content, and extended post-war painting’s essentialist move to pure abstraction manifest in abstract expressionism and minimalism. The emergence of trauma theory and the recent explosion of moving image digital media with its non-linear bias and the complex layering of “technical images” have created a new situation opening up alternate readings of such discounted materialist practices. As well as a historic precursor for digital media, it is suggested that a materialist cinema, represented here by the found footage films: Alone: Life Wastes Andy Hardy (Arnold 1998) and Dreamwork (Tscherkassky 2001), signposts a belated return for materialist film within the context of trauma studies. This materialist turn rescues such experimental film from its traumatic excision and extends an understanding of what has been termed a “trauma cinema” by Janet Walker. Rather than pure, abstract or visionary such practice is read here through trauma theory as performing implicit mechanisms of denial and erasure.

Found footage: recycling historic material a-historically

The digital has speeded up multi-platform image delivery, to impose sampling and collagic strategies into the way we process information. This is a trauma inducing situation. During an earlier period of technological change reading the moving landscape similarly overwhelmed the early train traveller. Wolfgang Schivelbusch noted that ‘The inability to acquire a mode of perception adequate to technological travel crossed all political, ideological and aesthetic lines.’ (1983) New perceptual strategies had to be developed that contextualized the blur and the streak produced by looking out the train window without overwhelming the viewer. Utilizing Chris Brewin’s (2001) model of two parallel memory systems, this paper argues that, as another round of unprecedented technological change impacts on our senses, another ‘re-alignment’ of the senses is required. Chris Brewin’s (2001) model of two parallel memory systems, of Verbally Accessible Memory (VAM) and Situational Accessible Memory (SAM), suggests that the current information explosion requires a greater emphasis on the SAM system for processing information and critical thinking. Processed through the amygdala, SAM is implicit, situationally triggered, information intensive and conveys no sense of time. Found footage films, like those of Martin Arnold and Peter Tscherkassky that cut up, layer, repeat and recycle historic imagery perform the sampling and collagic strategies that characterize this SAM memory system to demonstrate a more visually based mode of critical thinking.

Documentary practice in a participatory culture

Debates concerning the veracity, ethics and politics of the documentary form circle endlessly around the function of those who participate in it, and the meaning attributed to their participation. Great significance is attached to the way that documentary filmmakers do or do not participate in the world they seek to represent, just as great significance is attached to those subjects whose participation extends beyond playing the part of eyewitness or expert, such that they become part of the very filmmaking process itself. This Ph.D. explores the interface between documentary practice and participatory culture by looking at how their practices, discursive fields and histories intersect, but also by looking at how participating in one might mean participating in the other. In short, the research is an examination of participatory culture through the lens of documentary practice and documentary criticism. In the process, however, this examination of participatory culture will in turn shed light on documentary thinking, especially the meaning and function of ‘the participant’ in contemporary documentary practice. A number of ways of conceiving of participation in documentary practice are discussed in this research, but one of the ideas that gives purpose to that investigation is the notion that the participant in contemporary documentary practice is someone who belongs to a participatory culture in particular. Not only does this mean that those subjects who play a part in a documentary are already informed by their engagement with a range of everyday media practices before the documentary apparatus arrives, the audience for such films are similarly informed and engaged. This audience have their own expectations about how they should be addressed by media producers in general, a fact that feeds back into their expectations about participatory approaches to documentary practice too. It is the ambition of this research to get closer to understanding the relationship between participants in the audience, in documentary and ancillary media texts, as well as behind the camera, and to think about how these relationships constitute a context for the production and reception of documentary films, but also how this context might provide a model for thinking about participatory culture itself. One way that documentary practice and participatory culture converge in this research is in the kind of participatory documentary that I call the ‘Camera Movie’, a narrow mode of documentary filmmaking that appeals directly to contemporary audiences’ desires for innovation and participation, something that is achieved in this case by giving documentary subjects control of the camera. If there is a certain inevitability about this research having to contend with the notion of the ‘participatory documentary’, the ‘participatory camera’ also emerges strongly in this context, especially as a conduit between producer and consumer. Making up the creative component of this research are two documentaries about the reality television event Band In A Bubble, and participatory media practices more broadly. The single-screen film, Hubbub , gives form to the collective intelligence and polyphonous voice of contemporary audiences who must be addressed and solicited in increasingly innovative ways. One More Like That is a split-screen, DVD-Video with alternate audio channels selected by a user who thereby chooses who listens and who speaks in the ongoing conversation between media producers and media consumers. It should be clear from the description above that my own practice does not extend to highly interactive, multi-authored or web-enabled practices, nor the distributed practices one might associate with social media and online collaboration. Mine is fundamentally a single authored, documentary video practice that seeks to analyse and represent participatory culture on screen, and for this reason the Ph.D. refrains from a sustained discussion of the kinds of collaborative practices listed above. This is not to say that such practices don’t also represent an important intersection of documentary practice and participatory culture, they simply represent a different point of intersection. Being practice-led, this research takes its procedural cues from the nature of the practice itself, and sketches parameters that are most enabling of the idea that the practice sets the terms of its own investigation.

A estética documental no cinema ficcional de horror

O presente trabalho tem como proposta estudar o uso de estruturas documentais no cinema ficcional de horror, tipo de narrativa que ficou conhecida popularmente como found footage. Esses filmes fazem uso de uma linguagem propositalmente híbrida, associando a forma do documentário ao conteúdo da ficção e, hoje, encontram-se tão em voga que já possuem até mesmo clichês e estereótipos. A intenção é entender de que forma o gênero do horror se apropria douso de uma estética associada a registros documentais para favorecer as reações de medo no espectador. Para tanto, privilegiamos recortes na história do cinema e conceitos que possam contribuir para o desenvolvimento de nosso estudo, tanto no que diz respeito ao cinema documental, quanto no que diz respeito ao gênero de horror. Como objeto de análise mais detalhada, trazemos a trilogia inicial de da franquia Atividade Paranormal

(Pro)Motion Pictures: Len Lye in the Thirties

This article examines Len Lye’s film-making in the 1930s within a broader visual arts context, seeking to clarify the nature and extent of his involvement in British documentary film culture at this time. In particular, it demonstrates how Lye's method of fusing 'live action', found footage, and animation techniques created the possibility of a radical documentary practice that could reconcile promotional advertising and commercial art with avant-garde abstraction and kinaesthetic experimentation. In particular, the article focusses on Lye's N. or N.W. (1937, 35mm, b&w, 10 mns), arguing that his work from this period should be regarded as central - and not marginal - to any serious reassessment of Britain's “Documentary Movement” of the inter-war era, and its relations to any history of the cinema and visual culture.

Le temps décomposé : cinéma et imaginaire de la ruine

Thèse numérisée par la Division de la gestion de documents et des archives de l'Université de Montréal.

Archives et création : nouvelles perspectives sur l’archivistique

Ce cahier de recherche fait état des travaux menés au cours de la deuxième étape (2014-2015) du projet « Archives et création : nouvelles perspectives sur l’archivistique ». Les textes sont les suivants : Yvon Lemay et Anne Klein, « Préface », p. 4-5; Yvon Lemay, « Deuxième cahier de recherche : présentation », p. 6-26; Érika Nimis, « Combler les silences de l’histoire africaine. Ou comment des artistes visuels s’approprient des archives photographiques pour éclairer le passé à la lumière du présent », p. 27-42; Hélène Brousseau, « L'utilisation d’archives dans les arts visuels : dialogue entre une artiste et une archiviste », p. 43-58; Simon Côté-Lapointe, « Créer à partir d’archives : bilan, démarches et techniques d’un projet exploratoire », p. 59-95; Annaëlle Winand, « Le concept d’archive(s) et les films de réemploi », p. 96-111; Nicolas Bednarz et Céline Widmer, « Archives au pluriel : le Montréal de 1914-1918. L’expérience d’une création collaborative et multidisciplinaire », p. 112-142; Mattia Scarpulla, « La mémoire performative. Considérations sur les traces de la danse et les dispositifs de capture des mouvements », p. 143-173; Yvon Lemay et Anne Klein, « Quartiers disparus : l’envers du décor », p. 174-190. De plus, le cahier comprend une « Bibliographie » des travaux effectués sur les archives et la création depuis 2007, p. 191-196, et des informations sur « Les auteurs », p. 197.

The Body, the Film, the Archive and the Monster

Paper presented during the roundtable “The Exquisite Corpus: Film Heritage and Found Footage Films. Passing Through/Across Medias and Film Bodies” at the XIV MAGIS – Gorizia International Film Studies Spring School in Gorizia, Italy, March 9-15 2016

3000 / futuristische Phantasmen und aktuelle Fantasien der Technokultur

Die Kernthese dieser Arbeit ist eine Leerstelle. Ihre Formulierung beruht auf einer Beobachtung, wie sie von William Gibson stammen könnte: kulturell avantgardistische Gruppen der Gesellschaft internalisieren für ihre technologisch gestützten Praktiken futuristische Phantasmen geschichtlicher Vorläufer, die in Literatur und Mediengeschichte detektivisch aufspürbar sind. Werden diese Verinnerlichungen in aktuelle Fantasien umgewandelt, entsteht eine hybride Mischung vielfältigster Beschäftigungen, Reflexionen und Entwürfe von Technokultur. Bringt man diese Kopplungen auf das Jahr 3000, die nächste epochale zukünftige Zäsur, wird die Absurdität des Projekts, Technokultur überhaupt zu thematisieren deutlich. Technokultur ist im dynamischen Wandel sozio-ikonografisch untersuchbar, wird aber durch Unschärferelation zum object trouvé und Triebmoment für eine in es selbst hinein assimilierbare Analyse. Der daraus folgenden Vermessenheit kann durch instrumentelle Serendipity begegnet werden, die hier nicht Effekt wäre, stattdessen als Methode Verwendung findet: Finden statt Suchen. Das verhältnismäßig neue Schreib/Lese-Medium Hypertext bietet sich dafür als geradezu prädestiniert an. Hypertext ist prinzipiell unabgeschlossen, er folgt hier Arbeitsprinzipien wie sie seit den frühen 1990ern in Online-Tagebüchern und seit den frühen 2000er Jahren in Weblogs (World Wide Web Logbooks) auszumachen sind: Notizen, Found Text (analog zu Found Footage), Zitate, Fragmente, die kurze Form, kurz: wissenschaftliche Alltagstextproduktion wird nach Ordnungskriterien a-systematisiert und verwoben - weniger archiviert denn gesammelt. Eine Art Second Hand Theorie entsteht.

Old Tom, new Tom

This presentation will Involve a discussion of Canadian fringe artist Mike Hoolboom's experimental narrative Tom (2002 75 minutes, Digital Video) The presentation will Include a short excerpt and stills from the film Tom is a biography of experimental filmmaker Tom Chomont who tells of his struggle with HIV and Parkinson's disease and disarmingly recounts confronting memories of infanticide, incest, fetishism and death It is how these revelations are innovatively processed through excerpts of Chomont's films, home movies, photos, Images lifted straight form Video Busters, archival and found footage that is so telling it is as If the surface of cinema itself is the body that is being marked and reconstituted and "the personal" forever changed by the Infection of this material Into our psyche.

This work is offered as exemplary evidence of the strong link between an experimental non-narrative cinema that flourishes In North America and new media art

The presentation will touch on the following areas:

> The Innovative marking out of the self In terms relevant to a new media practice.
> The correspondence between this film and media theorist Arthur Kroker's Ideas about panic bodies and excremental culture.
> An examination of erasure and loss In non-narrative forms.
> The historical context of Hoolboom's work as part of a North American experimental tradition and as a shared non-narrative tradition With New Media.

The presentation Will conclude With some comments about the relationship between experimental film and new media In this country and how the failure to Identify this relationship constructively here may have contributed to the current "death of the new" The concept of new media and New Australian Will be contrasted to attain some Insight Into the Ideological underpinnings of "Creative Nation".

Documentary display : re-viewing nonfiction film and video

Not all documentary films and videos are sober depictions of the real world. Documentary representations can present expressive, entertaining and spectacular images. This book examines such innovative approaches as they occur within the process of 'documentary display' - a practice which emphasises the visual attractions of documentary representation. Works of documentary display explore modes of exhibitionistic 'showing' in which sensation is frequently the vehicle of cognition and knowledge. Such a display is analysed within the popular and prominent forms of found-footage film, 'rockumentary', the city film, nonfiction surf film and video, and certain views of natural science topics. This accessible and informed study - with its focus on entertaining, popular, spectacular and sensational froms of nonfiction representation - makes an important contribution to theoretical analyses of documentary film and video