René Vautier

I wish to question what could be an internationalism for today, in the field of cinema – a critical internationalism that defies the powers of state, nation, administration and global economy. Almost all the examples I will cite are provided by filmmakers who are trying to help, through images, people other than their own. Thanks to the films themselves, it seems possible to consider, even very briefly, new proposals concerning the conception of history; the conception of the history of cinema; of an oeuvre; of the filmmaker; of political forms; of curating; and, finally, of spectatorship.

Every film by René Vautier constitutes a pamphlet, a shield for the oppressed and the victims of history, a little war machine for justice. And like weapons in an underground cell, these films serve, are donated, exchanged, lent, thrown away, destroyed, lost, or hidden and sometimes forgotten in their hideout for a long time. In this regard, every work by René Vautier constitutes a special case, an episode in probably the most novelistic story in the history of cinema. Full of scars though they might be, these films are of a real beauty, not only in the aesthetic and stylistic sense, but in the sense of a cinema elevated to the plenitude of its necessity and its powers. 

With a few remarkable exceptions (Jean Mitry, Jonathan Rosenbaum, Noel Burch ...), the history of cinema has mainly been recounted from the industry’s point of view. May this contribution to a history of forms help us to escape such a dominant ideology and reconsider the works and the artists from a different perspective. Today the violence of the cultural industry is so cynically triumphant that it is possible to establish a law of inverse proportions between the social visibility of a film and its real eminence.