Guy Hennebelle

Guy Hennebelle (1941–2003) was a French film historian, critic and journalist. Hennebelle first lived and worked in Algeria between 1965 and 1968, after completing his journalism studies in Belgium, where he edited the cinema section in the journal El Moudjahid and would write over 600 articles (though under the pseudonym Halim Chergui since 1966). Before and after his return to France, Hennebelle dedicated his career to the histories of marginal and militant filmmaking contexts. Subsequently he worked and wrote for many journals over time, including in Cinéma, Jeune Cinéma, Cahiers du Cinéma, Cinéaste, Cinéma-Québec, Jeune Afrique and later Afrique Asie. He also collaborated on a number of publications and special journal editions regarding militant cinema, namely Cinéma militant (1976) [Film Éditions Cinéma d’aujourd’hui], La Palestine au cinéma (1977), co-edited with Khemaïs Khayati, and Les cinémas d’Amérique latine (1981) [Éditions L’Herminier], edited with Alfonso Gumucio Dagron. He himself also wrote two major works on cinema: Quinze ans de cinéma mondial, 1960–1975 (1975), describing the emergence of ‘New Wave’ cinemas worldwide, and Cinéma et politique, de la politique des auteurs au cinéma d’intervention (1980). In 1978, Hennebelle and his wife Monique Martineau founded the film journal CinémAction. He would later also assume directorship of the Collection Septième Art [Les Editions du cerf] in 1983. Together with his wife, he also founded the journal Panoramiques. His last book Les cinémas nationaux contre Hollywood, a re-edition of Quinze ans de cinéma mondial, appeared posthumously in 2004.

Guy Hennebelle, Monique Martineau Hennebelle, 1974
CONVERSATION
28.04.2021
EN

The Hour of Liberation is, therefore, a partisan film at all levels. In terms of the montage as well: you can’t place images filmed on both sides of the fence in any order, and tell the viewer to choose sides; that would put oppression and freedom, injustice and justice on the same level. The film is constructed on a structure that rejects the bourgeois conception of ‘objectivity’: it clearly takes sides, without necessarily hiding the difficulties of the struggle, without hiding the contradictions, without ultimately lapsing into triumphalism. The entire montage is conceived to produce an analysis of what a people’s war is.”

Interview with Selma Baccar

Farida Ayari, Férid Boughedir, Guy Hennebelle, 1981
CONVERSATION
19.05.2021
EN

“The International Women’s Year provided me with the opportunity to make it [Fatma 75]. I figured that, for the first Tunisian film entirely devoted to this subject, I must not resort to fiction but make an analytical work. Through this film, I set about demystifying what is called ‘the miracle of Tunisian women’s emancipation’.”

La momie de Chadi Abdel Salam

Guy Hennebelle, 1970
CONVERSATION
20.01.2021
FR EN

Votre film est donc avant tout une réflexion sur Je destin d’une culture nationale ?

Bien entendu. La trame policière de l’histoire ne m’a servi que de prétexte. Par ailleurs, La momie est un film que j’ai senti, et donc construit, à plusieurs niveaux.

The Mummy by Shadi Abdel Salam

Guy Hennebelle, 1970
CONVERSATION
20.01.2021
FR EN

So, your film is above all a reflection on the destiny of a national culture?

Absolutely. The crime narrative was just a pretext. Besides, The Mummy is a film that I felt, and therefore constructed, on various levels.

Guy Hennebelle, 1970
CONVERSATION
21.11.2018
FR

Je ne veux pas faire du cinéma pour faire du cinéma. Non. Je veux dire certaines choses, totalement. Quand j’ai écrit mon scénario, je n’ai pas pensé à un public, ni au facteur commercial ni aux critiques. Je vivais en France avec un sentiment de minoritaire et j’ai voulu vomir des choses que j’avais sur le cœur. Oui, oui, vous pouvez l’écrire : Soleil Ô est un vomissement. 

An Interview with Tewfik Saleh

Guy Hennebelle, Khemaïs Khayati, 1977
CONVERSATION
06.12.2023
EN

My duty as a filmmaker consists in furnishing the arms of critique, the intellectual means to understand what happens so that the spectators are not “had” by what they’re told. I don’t believe at all that The Dupes is a negative film because it talks of failure. My position is a little like the mother who warns her child, “If you do this, this is what will happen. If you go into the woods, you will be eaten by the wolf…”