All language subtitles for Cinema in the Present Tense

I have some good news, for everyone:

cinema is in crisis.

Which is hardly news, in a way,

for it has continuously been in crisis
throughout its existence.

It is not a sign of future danger either -
the future is an enigma,

and it takes a lot of irresponsibility
to speculate about it,

to pretend to decipher its mysteries -

but rather that of a seismographic
sensibility to the stakes of the present.

I think there is no other symptom
more relevant to an art's vitality

than its constant reappraisal,

in accordance with the constant
reformulation of our world.

The real issue would be to know

whether the forces
that transform the world

are the same forces
that transform the arts,

how both feed on one another,

unless they are contradictory.

It seems to me that another
question arises today as well,

which, in its own way, parasitizes
the other two, muddies the waters,

and obscures our reading of cinema
and its place in its own history:

the nature of the reflection
determining our gaze

and the way in which this reflection
is structured.

Historically, that is to say, since
the middle of the history of cinema,

its modern age,

the tools of cinephillia
have defined this framework,

which was conceived by André Bazin,

himself a product of Jacques Maritain's
Social Christianity.

Its success and relevance
are due to the fact

that it was adopted by a generation
of young filmmakers,

those of the Nouvelle Vague,

for whom theoretical writing
was the foundation of their practice.

Reflection and action
were two poles of a dialectic

that would become the key
to our understanding of cinema,

its singularities
as well as its paradoxes.

Forgive me for going back so far in time,
more than half a century,

in order to deal with
the current state of cinema,

but the problem of time seems vital to me

when trying to understand
where we are exactly.

This is why we should
begin by asking ourselves

both the question of what this
original cinephilia is exactly

and what its alternative might have been.

I postulate, rightly or wrongly,

that any reflection on cinema
is consciously or unconsciously

based on the ambiguous nature

of cinema's relationship
with the other arts.

And, consequently, with their theory.

From the earliest days of cinema,
a contrast existed

between the proponents of a cinema

in line with the synchronous history
of the avant-garde on the one hand

and the proponents of its intrinsic
bastardism on the other -

torn between popular literature
and symbolist imagery.

André Bazin and Cahiers du cinéma,
for their part,

chose to examine praxis and to build
an essentialist bubble out of it.

Cinema was, as it were, elsewhere,
unrelated to the old issues.

The various Nouvelles Vagues

that spread through the world
federated around this approach.

At the center of it all was the question
of filming and the ethics of filming,

and the freedom of the auteur,
which allowed all idiosyncrasies.

But from the beginning of the 1960s,
and more extremely afterwards,

this cinephilia was doubly cornered:

by the repressed relationship
with the visual arts -

Jean-Luc Godard made this
the center of his work -

and the sociopolitical
evolution of the world,

which was shaken up by the youth movement
that materialized in France in May '68

and in the United States
in the Summer of Love of 1967.

Put simply,
the relationship with the visual arts

questioned the form of modern cinema,

its relationship
with figuration and narration,

while the upheaval that swept across
contemporary societies

questioned the place or even
the legitimacy of the auteur.

Everything that seemed clear
became blurred;

everything the new cinema
had been built on

was consequently called into question,
even by its main artisans.

This profound and insoluble question

of whether or not cinema
is part of the visual arts

left its mark on me personally.

Is cinema the "seventh art,"

a term that is often used
without really understanding it,

or is it something other than an art,

perhaps even the philosopher's stone

that the 20th-century avant-gardes
were searching for,

the 'sublation of the arts,'
in the Hegelian sense of the term.

Cinema as an art, indeed,

but one that would possess the power
to look at the other arts,

to solve the mysteries
of the representation of the world,

in short, to perform the miracle of
the reproduction of perception as a whole,

the access to which
haunts the history of painting -

Turner similarly solved the search
for movement by way of abstraction.

I often think of what Ingmar Bergman
said about Tarkovsky

moving freely through spaces

whose doors he himself
had knocked on his entire life.

In this sense,

I have always been confused by
the misunderstandings sparked off

by the distinction
between experimental cinema,

heir to the early-ZOth-century Dadaists
Hans Richter, et cetera,

and Surrealist endeavors,
Man Ray, Bunuel...

and the narrative cinema
that established itself very early on

as popular entertainment,
gradually winning its spurs.

Venom and Eternity
by the founder of Lettrism, Isidore lsou,

should in my opinion be regarded
as the harbinger of the Nouvelle Vague.

And, on the other side of the Atlantic,
a similar break

brought about by a generation
of experimental filmmakers

who challenged everything
that came before them,

Kenneth Anger, Andy Warhol, Jonas Mekas,
Stan Brakhage or John Cassavetes,

was the basis of the free cinema to come,

of New Hollywood, if you like.

Especially in terms of the formal
reformulation of cinema's aesthetics,

which far less affected
the Nouvelle Vague.

Through superimposition
and black magic (Anger),

abstraction (Brakhage),

a diaristic style (Mekas),

dramaturgy and the status
of the actor (Cassavetes),

or the use of the zoom
as a reinvention of the fixed shot,

liberated from the static
camera obscura (Warhol),

it is not the syntax but the very texture
of cinema that is at stake.

I, for my part, regard cinema as a whole:

narrative cinema has always
fed on experimental works

just as the latter
have always been inspired

by the limits or deadlocks of figuration.

What I mean is that there is
some Brakhage in Michael Bay

and some Warhol
in Fassbinder or Almodévar.

At the heart of these matters,

as is often the case when it comes
to questioning the contemporary,

is the work of Jean-Luc Godard,

initially a product
of classical cinephilia

and haunted until sundown

by his questioning of and by the doubt
eating away at this same cinephilia,

the knot of suffering that has
defined his art for a long time now.

Theory is thought in motion,

thought in its capacity to take hold -
including in strategic terms -

of the issues of a present
that is constantly redefined.

At what point, when exactly,
did cinema cease to be thought?

When did it lose the vital, essential link

between the practice of an art
and its reflection?

I fear that many irresistible forces

have contributed to what I continue to
perceive as the failure of a generation.

First of all, I would say that cinema
has been the victim of its own prestige,

and (auteur) theory of
its international success,

which has opened wide
the doors of the academy.

As soon as film thought
became an academic discipline,

it became fixed; it ceased to be

the continuation of filmmakers'
material and practical concerns.

Who, today, is seriously interested
in how lenses transform space,

particularly by the long focal lengths
specific to modern cinema?

Who wonders
about the monocular perspective

as a limit to cinema's
reproduction of the real?

Or, again, who explores the disparity

between the open, free field
of novel or modern-theater writing

and the narrow limits of the conventions

governing the work
of committees and commissions

holding the power of life and death
over cinematographic works?

Not to mention series,
whose standard-bearers seem all too happy

to have a go at applying the tissue
of conventions and platitudes

from American screenwriting textbooks.

What I am getting at is the point
when living theory becomes dead ideology.

In the hands of university professors,

who see it as a chance to add
a touch of modernity to their teaching,

thought in motion becomes a doxa,
an assemblage of rules, of automatisms,

no longer based on anything
since we have forgotten their very source,

the source of youth,
of the most spontaneous poetry.

If I wanted to take my reflection
another step further

and be more provocative
than I wish to be in this context,

I would say that it is time, today,

to seriously, and responsibly,
confront the failure of cinephilia.

I do not mean to cast doubt
on its achievements,

nor on its critical importance within
20th-century thinking about the image:

it is of paramount importance.

But the very success
of this treasure of film history

should open our eyes and force us to admit
that it is a moment of cinema,

that this moment is long past because
it no longer produces anything new,

if not a form of tetany
resulting in the idea

that the totality of cinema would have
been thought in the era of 1960s modernity

and of classical cinema before that,

and that the only thing left for us today

is to be satisfied
with the values and tools

of an ironic,
or rather non-duped postmodernity,

if not lapsing into baroque grotesques.

What I mean is that in a world
of proliferating images, of all kinds,

we cannot but notice the fragility
of the place of cinephile thought,

which has become a fall-back position,

whereas, until recently, it was
still at the center of the debate.

Once its great principles
had been acquired,

once film had been recognized
as a legitimate object of study,

once its auteur had gained the prestige
that was formerly reserved

for those practicing older
and more serious disciplines,

once its legitimacy had been recognized to
be halfway between high and low culture,

we did not move an inch, it seems.

I have witnessed the walls of a -
university - stronghold being constructed

so as to protect,
around the guardians of this temple,

values that have not produced anything
useful or relevant for a very long time.

I say this all the more uneasily

as I put myself not only
in the position of essayist here

but also in that of a filmmaker
examining theory,

asking the question of knowing,
of understanding,

in what way it would have been
useful or stimulating to me

beyond what I learned by contributing
to Cahiers du cinéma for five years,

between 1980 and 1985.

The answer, as far as I am concerned,

is brutal: nothing.

And, as nature has gifted me
with a rather contrary spirit,

I am left with the feeling
that I had to swim against the tide

of ephemeral conceptions,
of lucky charms,

of instantly forgotten fashions
of a drifting cinephile thought,

determined by a late connection
with Bourdieusian sociology,

dabbling in the mirror games
of postmodernity

and naively running after
the prestige of the visual arts,

ever since the latter have invaded
the field of the moving image

via the practice of installation art,
however fragile and questionable.

Please allow me to look
to the past one last time

before coming to less
negative considerations,

although I am in many ways a supporter
of the powers of the negative,

which were a great inspiration to me.

When historical cinephilia was formed
in the late 1950s and early 1960s,

did the theory of the visual arts
have anything at all to say about cinema,

about its history and the powerful forces
that determined its transformation?

Not much, in my opinion,

and you do not have to be, as I was,

a reader of Guy Debord
and the Situationists

to observe that during those years,

faced with the advent
of the New York School;

Pollock, de Kooning, Rothko...

the main question
troubling the European avant-gardes

was their own political failure

and the rehashing
of the deadlocks of abstraction,

the repetition of transgressions that
weren't even shocking anymore in 1930.

Cinema was so far removed from the
concerns of the theory of the visual arts

that it referred,
even in its most contemporary variations,

such as Italian neorealism,

to the most basic monocular
reproduction of the world.

Cinema's question of figuration
seemed insignificant

compared with
the exploration of the obscurities

or the dazzlement of the unconscious
through the means of abstraction

and, even more so,

compared with the movement
of art's negation through happenings

in their most radical
and extreme variations,

such as Viennese Actionism.

Or, again, the Hamburg Theses
of Debord, Vaneigem and Kotényi

which signaled
the Situationist renunciation of art

in favor of
the "realization of philosophy."

I am writing this
to recall how cinephile thought

was also a powerful antidote

to the destructive forces
at work within the avant-gardes

and how it enabled
the budding filmmakers of the time,

undoubtedly the richest and most prolific
generation in the history of film,

to find a basis for a practice
of representing the world,

which the visual arts were denying them.

We will have to come to the present.

I am going to try and do that.

I would like to begin
with the issue of theory,

given that I reject cinephilia for its
ossification into ideology and dogma.

In his recent book A History 0f Pictures,
David Hockney,

whom I consider to be the main
contemporary thinker of the image,

apart from being
the greatest living painter,

pursues a fascinating reflection
on the origins of representation:

how it was long built
around a relationship

with the monocular perspective,

with the technical evolution of lenses
and their usage,

and the technique of the camera obscura.

As much as these tools allow him

an infinitely stimulating rereading
of the classical era of painting,

he also deals with
their modern reappraisal.

The Cubist moment
was a pivotal event in this regard,

breaking with the traditional
reference points of perspective

through a multiplication of angles
for one and the same image.

In my view,
Hockney does not go far enough,

in the sense that his view
is not supported by the theory of cinema,

which has over time
forgotten being a theory of perception -

except with Gilles Deleuze who,
primarily in The Movement Image,

has been one of the very last
great thinkers of cinema.

It is indeed from
the point of view of movement -

and of the multiplication of perspectives
and axes within a sequence,

not within a shot,
which is not the true syntagm of cinema -

that the question of cinema as an answer
to Hockney's concerns plays out,

as a way of questioning the limits
of the original camera obscura.

The movement of the camera,
ever since it can be carried,

and the use of long lenses,
including indoors,

ever since we have
sensitive enough opticals at our disposal,

indeed brings us several steps closer,
I think,

to the reproduction of perception,
which is finally within reach.

Hockney refuses to take stock
of these questions at work in cinema,

which is the limit of his reflection,

but it seems to me that the last
breakthrough in his most recent work

is essential, in the sense
that it suggests placing painting

back at the heart
of the history of images.

To summarize it schematically,

he does not consider the shift
from painting to photography as a break

but a continuity
in which the decisive invention

is not so much
the rival reproduction of the real

as it is the ability to fix -
on photographic paper -

an image that painters had already
known for a long time

through their use of perspective

and which was at the source
of its techniques and their evolution.

The importance of this idea
lies in its relegitimization

of the age-old artistic theory developed
around painting at the heart of cinema,

which could quite reasonably
be considered

the continuation
of the invention of photography.

Fundamentally,
the question I am trying to ask

would be to know if it would not be
in the interest of cinema today

to confront the wealth of reflections
that have, since the Renaissance,

been concerned with considering both the
question of the reproduction of the world

and the even more essential question
of the exploration of perception.

If I were asked what I think is most
useful to teach in today's film schools,

I would recommend these two tracks.

Besides,
in order to support these intuitions,

it would suffice to observe

how the thinkers of the image
that Jean-Luc Godard -

the most authentically plastic of all
the great modern filmmakers -

most often refers to are Elie Faure
and, above all, Andre Malraux,

whose brilliance
and staggering juxtapositions -

theoretical short circuits -
most certainly continue to haunt us.

What I am trying to say here

is how poorly equipped cinephilia is
to face these questions,

which are at the heart
of the understanding

of cinema's mysterious
contemporary nature,

whose very elements
still seem to escape us.

Whereas the history of the arts offers us
a wealth of stimulating opportunities

to reinvent our relationship
with the moving image and, perhaps,

to set it back in the long history
that ended up being obscured

by the opposition between classical cinema
and modernity, a productive time.

Who is thinking cinema today, from which
point of view and based on which values?

And what does cinema think of itself,
according to which ethics and principles?

Two questions of a very different nature,
whose answers seem to have crumbled -

especially on the Internet -

and whose coherence has become
infinitely difficult to imagine.

Seen from a limited angle,
that of French cinema,

it seemed to me that,
although I was not part of it myself,

the strong personalities
of Serge Daney and Claude Lanzmann

sewed as reference points for a while

by founding a sort of
funeral postscript to cinephilia,

which was post-leftist
rather than postmodern

and defined by the question of the taboo:

on the one hand,
the "tracking shot in Kapo"

which was criticized by Jacques Rivette

in an essay about Gillo Pontecorvds film,

auteur oi The Battle of Algiers

and indestructible idol
of anti-colonialist cinema,

and which, for Daney,
becomes obscenity itself,

the aestheticization of deportation,

at a time when he is giving
a deeply moving literary form

to his own hitherto repressed personal
history of a father he never knew,

a Polish Jew and victim of the camps.

Claude Lanzmann, on the other hand,

the auteur of the astonishing
masterpiece Shoah,

by grasping deportation
in a transcendental way

and refraining from using archival images,

built a film ethics around this question
that made a lasting impression.

The combination of these two issues served
as theory for a generation of filmmakers

who were themselves rarely directly
affected by these historical questions

but who were looking for a moral code
which the ruins of classical cinephilia,

already critically wounded by leftism,
were unable to provide.

The paradox
of this moment in cinema theory

is that it had nothing
constructive to propose

other than the establishing
of some code of restriction.

Complete with the obligingly raised
specter of the death of cinema.

I wouldn't have liked to start making
films in those dire circumstances,

and it was Arnaud Desplechin
who, in La sentinelle -

a film I always thought
Serge Daney would have loved -

managed to untie this knot
and rescue cinema from this curse.

But wasn't there
a fundamental truth to all this

and wasn't Serge Daney, who climbed aboard
the post-Bazinian train during the 1970s,

nearly clairvoyant with regard
to the deadlocks of cinephilia

around which he had established himself
and whose unraveling,

decomposing and self-denial
he witnessed while he was himself dying?

What is left of these questions?

Do they remain, did they get
past the borders of France?

Not really.

Do they appeal to young filmmakers?

Do they have a posterity,
or are they only relevant

within the context of this reflection
on the present state of cinema?

Hardly.

When trying to identify the place
of a reformulation of cinephilia today,

it is impossible not to situate it
on the Internet

and in the latter's redefinition
of both the viewing modes of cinema

and the way in which
we move through its history.

It is an irrelevant commonplace
and yet a truth worth mentioning

that today's generations have
an infinitely wider access to history -

to the entire history of cinema
as well as to its present -

unimaginable for pre-digital humanity,

who only had access
through the Cinémathéque

to a fraction
of the masterpieces of cinema,

some of them remaining
perfectly unattainable.

We don't see everything,

but we have access to almost everything,
free of charge even;

cinephilia has dissolved
into a multitude of conflicting cliques,

each organized around one fragment
of one glorious past,

to the extent that even its symbolic value
continues to diminish.

There are still films,
often very good ones too -

more good films are made today
than at any other time -

whose stakes play out on an ad hoc basis:

will it win the Oscar, the Palm,
the Lion, the Bear, will it be nominated?

While filmmakers as auteurs are fading.

Who today knows how to follow
the thread of an oeuvre,

to understand what is at work
in an artist's search,

however senseless and futile?

It's all about this film right here,

and after that
everything starts all over again.

In the digital fragmentation and its
dilution of theoretical pertinence today,

the entire legacy of auteur cinephilia
is pretty much called into question.

Which theory is entering into dialogue
with cinema in the present,

which theory is accepted, has the right to
help shape the inspiration of filmmakers?

To whom is one accountable?

I am a little afraid of the answer,
to be honest.

It seems to me that it is sociology -
it is easier to say the political -

and communitarianism.

But is this a good or a bad thing?

And am I not venturing onto fragile,
shifting sands?

I believe there is an injunction
to address these questions,

even if I doubt
that I will be able to formulate

a satisfactory,
let alone consensual, answer.

We know the evils of our time.

Global warming, ecological disaster,
an insane increase in social inequalities,

the impossibility of managing
migratory flows

and, above all, the inability
of those who govern, of states,

to give a satisfactory
or even vaguely reassuring response

to these anxiety-inducing subjects,

not to mention wars,
epidemics or unemployment.

Conversely, it seems as if

the self-destructive opposition
to the apprehension of these evils

has in our democracies
become an electoral asset.

It is only natural
that filmmakers are citizens too

and thus legitimately involved
in the issues society is facing.

But the political
is the domain of the complex,

and it does not necessarily
produce good cinema.

What's more, fictional cinema struggles -
which is normal -

to grasp social issues that are analyzed
or represented much more adequately

by publishing, the press
or even documentaries,

longer and therefore more legitimate forms

that possess the ability
to treat fragile or sensitive subjects

with the necessary rigor,
precision and exactingness

that cinema can only
very exceptionally offer.

From my point of view, the sociological
is a bad branch to catch hold of,

not least because simplifications,
amalgamations, and dramatization

risk cutting out the facts,
reducing them to comfortable generalities

and resulting in an interpretation
that is both erroneous and harmful.

I do not wish to criticize
or delegitimize a cinema

that aims to be accountable
to the state and its citizens;

on the contrary,
it is perfectly commendable.

I just want to say that I find it very
difficult, and sometimes even dangerous,

and that I do not at any rate
discern a key there

that would allow us to think contemporary,
let alone future, cinema

in a satisfactory or stimulating way.

What to think of communitarianism,

which has become a factor
influencing our societies

and which in turn examines cinema
for lack of being examined by it,

which would seem more fundamental, riskier
and more satisfying anyway to our minds;

I have always been convinced
that it is the role of cinema and art

to examine society
and certainly not to be examined by it,

especially not in terms of censorship,

the eternal hallmark
of totalitarian regimes.

I was an adolescent in the 1970s.

I have often repeated this
and will continue to do so

because this period, and its questioning
of all society's values marked me.

I lived and was actively involved
in a counterculture

that advocated the liberation
of everyday life,

and I was engaged in forms of leftism

that promoted individual liberation
rather than collectivist utopias

and support for authoritarian
or even genocidal regimes.

I have seen the liberation
of homosexuality in words and deeds,

I have seen the revival of feminism
and its decisive victories.

I have seen the invention
of a Franco-Maghrebi identity,

of a culture originating in the districts
the African immigrants were relegated to,

encouraged to settle in France
in order to serve as labor

for Gaullist France's
great infrastructure works.

I was less interested, afterwards,

in the identitarian drift
that followed from these steps forward,

nor in their political or ideological
instrumentalization.

Perhaps they were fatal;

perhaps they were necessary,
I don't know.

I have personally never thought
of my relationship with others

in terms of the color of their skin
or their sexual preferences.

As for my relationship
with women and feminism -

which would be my lifelong
favorite political party

because I am utterly convinced
that toxic masculinity

has become the source
of all evil in our world -

it was Groucho Marx
who gave the best definition

when he said that man
is a woman like any other.

I couldn't have said it better myself.

I add these more personal comments
not just to define who I am

but, in this instance,
"where I'm speaking from,"

to use the jargon of the political years.

I personally think that cinema
can be communitarian -

I do not think it is intended that way,
but why not -

but this communitarianism
is nevertheless entirely unsuited

to taking the place of the absence
of theoretical thinking on cinema,

which we have to take stock of today.

I will have to address Hollywood.

I have practically nothing positive
to say about it

except that this industry's prosperity
and new modalities do not delight me,

they frighten or even repulse me,
because what they have recently produced

is diametrically opposed to what I loved
or admired about the American cinema that,

throughout film history, provided this art
with several of its greatest masters.

We are witnessing the triumph of series,

the distribution of films
through digital platforms

and the confiscation of screens

in the service of
(mostly Disney-studio) franchises,

whose hegemony now seems absolute.

Why take the trouble to finance a film

that is not meant
to provoke a sequel, a spin-off,

or another film "in the universe of"

and whose unsure relationship
with the public is unpredictable?

For a long time now, in Hollywood,
the territory of film has been shrinking.

To the benefit of an independent cinema

forced to make do
with ridiculous budgets -

and thus limited in its practicing
of the contemporary syntax of cinema,

which is reserved for major productions.

And Netflix, and Disney Plus,
and Apple, etc;

hasn't cinema taken refuge there?

Haven't Alfonso Cuarén, Martin Scorsese,

the Safdie brothers, and Noah Baumbach
found political asylum there?

I have even been there myself,
since my film Wasp Network

is distributed by Netflix in most places,

except where it had been bought
in advance - first of all in France,

where it was an honest public success
on the big screen.

No other distributor offered the producers
of the film a viable alternative.

If there is one issue cinema-thinking -

which could use some sorely
missing theoretical tools -

comes up against,

it is the confusion generated
by the profound transformation

of film distribution and financing.

First of all, do the platforms

intend to finance ambitious
contemporary auteur cinema,

beyond the incidental effect of fame
that comes with the rivalry in this field

of newcomers determined to take over
a large share of the market?

In other words, will Netflix, in need
of prestige and symbolic value today,

still need it next year or the year after?

Not really, I guess.

As for the studios, will they return
to film as a business model

or is the deviation towards franchises
on the one hand

and series on the other definitive?

In short, is there still room
for a free cinema on the big screen?

I believe that
if this window is not closing,

it is at least shrinking before our eyes.

The only real model left
is an independent, radical, daring cinema,

alas with limited distribution.

Am I comfortable with that?

Not really.

I come from the visual arts originally;

I was influenced by contemporary poetry,

and my musical tastes have most often
led me to artists on the margins' margins,

not to mention my aesthetic,
philosophical, and political convictions,

which are of a terribly minority nature
within my generation.

But if I chose to devote myself to cinema,
it was because of its majority status,

because it was the last art form
that profoundly resonated with society,

that wasn't trapped in its stronghold,

that hadn't suffered the overwhelming
deviation of the visual arts,

which opted for an alliance
with triumphant financial capitalism,

choosing a false cynical radicalism,

which Guy Debord called "state Dadaism,"

meant to promote it
to stratospheric heights.

The cinema that inspired me, that I loved,
that I have tried to practice myself

is an impure and open cinema,
particularly accessible

to those for whom cinema is often
the only opportunity to encounter art

as vital, beneficial
and, why not, salutary.

Do I think, in this regard,
that Alfonso Cuarén, Martin Scorsese,

the Coen brothers, and so many others

have been right
in choosing a form of security

and entrusting their films to Netflix?
I don't.

I think that their films demonstrate
that the cinema I believe in

is alive and feasible -

most of these films
could have easily been financed

without the help of Netflix
or other platforms -

and that it is the extension,
the continuation of an art

that is truly of our time,
of our generation,

that gives the most susceptible,
sensitive account

of the transformation of the world,
of beings, of time,

so many things that belong to cinema

and which are in danger of getting lost
or forgotten in the flow of images;

and, even if I have few certainties,

I am certain that this danger
is very real,

that facing it and persevering
will unite us,

however powerful the forces
we have to face.

At this point, my reader
has every right to ask me

what this absent theory is, exactly,

that cinema in the present time
would need.

It seems I have already evoked
the indispensable back and forth

between intuitive, spontaneous,
uncontrolled practice,

often determined by the use
of new tools or new mediums,

and its thought.

I don't mean to say that the development
of the arts is the word of the Pythia

and that it is up to critics, essayists,
and certain filmmakers too,

as I am doing at this very moment,
to try to decipher its enigmas.

But I do think it might be important,
perhaps even essential,

that works generate what
Roberto Longhi called ekphrasis,

that is to say the discourse
made possible and provoked

by the questions, enigmas
and breakthroughs

that art in its quest for life
and its contradictions leaves unsolved.

A writing that would be
in dialogue with the artists,

a revelation of the work

and by this very fact
an intercessor for the spectator.

I understand this
in the most literal sense,

that of knowing how to read
and answer the questions raised

day by day by the practice of film,

but I would also like
to push this issue a little further

and open it up to two fields

which seem to offer great potential
within the present context.

The first is the unconscious,
and the second is ethics.

Here, more than elsewhere,
I must speak in the first person

and share concerns
that have always haunted me,

even when they were losing ground

in film reflection
and in the inspiration of filmmakers.

Applied to cinema,
and please forgive me

the inevitable
simplifications and shortcuts

when approaching that vast a subject,

psychoanalysis enlightens us
in two different forms.

The first, broadly Freudian, form
reminds us

that auteurs are never entirely aware
of what they are doing

in their apprehension of characters
and their acts,

in the same manner that writers,
taking up their pen,

do not always write
what they had planned to,

as writing reveals thought
rather than thought freezing writing:

in short, I mean
that both filmmakers and writers,

however lucid they may be,

do not always know
what they are saying or doing

because their unconscious is at work.

In another time, not long ago,
this went without saying,

and in reflections on Ingmar Bergman's,

Michelangelo Antonioni's
or Jacques Tati's characters,

one went looking for what motivated
or determined the modern individual,

for better or for worse.

I believe the same
could be the case today,

at a time when the meaning of films,
in its multiple forms,

has more than ever become
a subject of debate and polemics.

In films, as in any work of the mind,
it is the unconscious that acts.

We open our doors to it

and there is nothing more precious
than what it expresses through us

once we refrain from commonplaces,
convenience, conventions

and all the false dramatic rules

determining committees
and commissions

on which the present and future
of cinema sadly all too often depends,

limiting and distorting
the authentic inspiration and desires

of young filmmakers who are taught
how not to be themselves

by the dominant rules
of the film industry.

The other dimension according to which
psychoanalysis defines cinema

I would like to call broadly Jungian,

in the sense that cinema in its entirety,

even in its most conventional
and simplistic form, can -

and, in my opinion, should -

be regarded
as a collective unconscious.

The world of images,
the fantastic, the imaginary,

wherever it may lead us, often in the most
disappointing or banal ways,

is the dream of our society,
and it informs us, often without knowing,

about the state of the world
better than any other art,

with the exception maybe of songs,

of popular entertainment
and music in all its forms,

providing a real-time account of what
is flowing through our present time.

For example, I have always
considered Star Trek

a quasi-documentary look at office life

and the interactions between employees,

torn between their daily routine
and the dangers of the outside world;

I only later realized what was
literally staring me in the face,

that their spaceship
is called "Enterprise"...

On a darker note,

it is difficult not to consider
the proliferation of films

that are in some way haunted
by destruction and the end of the world,

and built around Marvel superheroes,
a sort of revenge of masculinity,

which is threatened by the redefinition
of the place of women in modern societies.

And I deliberately choose
two rather simple tendencies

with the sole intention of showing
that unraveling these threads

could contribute to thinking the truths,
including the unpleasant ones,

that animate our time.

Which brings me to ethics.
It deserves to be examined,

even if the present state of cinema
might provide us

with few easy or satisfactory answers.

It is not a question of morality for me,

given that most of the works of Eisenstein
or Vertov could be defined as propaganda,

that Rossellini himself made films
approved by the fascist state,

that it can be painful
to watch The Birth 0f a Nation,

one of film history's masterpieces,

that Bergman, Hitchcock
and many of the most eminent artists

in the history of cinema
have made Cold War films.

This does not detract
from their genius.

Not to mention Leni Riefenstahl,
who is denied her - important - place

only because of her Nazism
and the benefits she derived from it.

A great filmmaker like Xie Jin,

the inspired auteur of Two Stage Sisters
and Woman Basketball Player N0. 5,

had no scruples about pursuing his career

during the Cultural Revolution's
darkest hours.

I rather consider
it a question of practice,

like when André Bazin
spoke of a "forbidden montage"

when two antinomic shots are put together,

a wild beast on the one hand

and an actor disguised as an explorer
on the other.

Or when Claude Lanzmann,
who I quoted earlier,

examines the legitimacy of representing,

of fictionalizing the concentration camps
and the gas chambers.

Everyone has the right to argue

and to defend his or her point of view
on this issue.

It is no less relevant
and it has, above all,

the merit of going to the utmost limit

of a question
that arises on a smaller scale

in every single gesture
of the practice of cinema.

Who finances films,

where does the money come from,

whose accomplices do we become
when spending that money,

when practicing our art?

What did we give up,

what did we have to compromise with

when we needed to meet
the demands of the market

and the industry dictating their rules?

The practices of which television channel,

basing its audience on which demagogy,
do we approve of?

To which fantasized demand,
to which "general public,"

despised by those
who claim to speak in their name,

have we given in?

For example, fifteen years after the fact,

I discovered that my film
Sentimental Destinies

had been distributed in the United States
by a company,

and a very sympathetic one at that,

whose main shareholder happened to be
the extreme-right agitator Steve Bannon.

Am I comfortable with that?

No, I'm not.

Do I have a choice?
I don't know, perhaps,

but things would be much clearer

if these issues were discussed
and laid out in black-and-white.

The same goes for American
mega productions adapting their scenarios

to the demands of the Chinese government's
politico-confucian censorship

in order to reach the planet's
largest audience.

I am often reminded of the title
of an article by Frangois Truffaut,

ironically called "Clouzot at Work,
or the Reign of Terror."

We have to acknowledge, as Truffaut did,

the image, widespread at the time
and more diffuse today,

of the demiurge-filmmaker
who abused his authority and power

to the benefit of an unspeakable quest,

an absolute as vague
as it is hard to formulate,

and whose whims, anger and impertinence

are as many tangible expressions of it,
remaining, however,

inaccessible to ordinary mortals.

I consider the opposite important,

that filmmakers are accountable
to their crew

and that the quality of concentration,
the richness of sharing,

the clarity of intentions
all form a decisive part

of the collective adventure...

of a film shoot.

I have often,
whenever I had the opportunity,

thanked the crew of my films
and reminded them

how much cinema is the sum of energies
relayed by a director,

whose art often depends
on his ability to listen,

to pay attention to ideas,

to the flow of things
that arises on set day after day.

His talent also depends on knowing
how to give rise to that.

For me, it is an old and deep conviction

that the best of cinema depends
on the quality of everyone's commitment

to a strange undertaking which has to do

with the reinvention
and re-enchantment of the real,

but which is also a parallel world,
a parallel life

in which everyone must be able
to surpass themselves,

to find fulfillment and, in a way,

to give meaning to what is
a little more than a job,

the commitment of a life,
an intimate quest.

This in no way means that I would renounce
what I have often declared,

namely that directing is first
and foremost a force of disruption

in the automatisms
that structure the functioning of a set.

It is indeed up to the mise-en-scene

to constantly unsettle conventions
and conveniences,

forms that are only alive if they are
constantly shaken up and questioned:

and the more we shake them up,

the more we refuse to content ourselves
with ready-made answers,

the more we put into practice
the conviction

that cinema can and should be
a thousand things -

what it was in the past
or what remains to be explored,

that this territory is infinite

and the only one
that really deserves exploring -

the more chances we get to reveal

the very meaning of our art
and its place in the world.

But none of that can be achieved alone.

It needs to be extended, deepened,
applied by everyone,

with all attendant risks
and with the exactingness

necessary to realize this ambition.

This applies to all filming

and to all filmmakers who have
chosen to practice their art

outside the laws and rules
of the streaming industry

and who have been able to preserve
their often hard-won freedom -

cinema's supreme value -
to their own benefit, of course,

but also, and just as much,
to the benefit of their collaborators.

A film is a microcosm, all of society,
every stratum is represented in it,

and the same waves,
the same tensions run through it,

except that these values are put to
the test more immediately, more urgently,

on a daily basis and with immediately
observable consequences.

This is why I attach inestimable value
to an ethical practice of cinema

whose beneficial effects,
pleasures as well as dangers,

would be shared by all,
amounting to a disalienated work

at the heart of the very territory
of alienation.

I talked about accountability,

and I believe one must first of all
submit one's work

to the respect of these values.

As you can guess, I do not really like

what has become of the current
film industry in the hands of executives

who look more like business managers
produced by business schools,

or of senior civil servants,
who are often people of great quality

but whose instincts, ambitions
and imagination

are a million miles away
from those of the adventurers,

the players and visionaries
who built this cathedral we all share,

the cathedral
of the first century of cinema.

In this regard, I have always put my Faith
in what is called independent cinema -

structures whose historical models
would be

Frangois Truffaut's
'Les Films du Carrosse'

or Barbet Schroedefis and Eric Rohmer's
'Les Films du Losange.'

But this would disregard the work
of producers who have,

in the often hostile undergrowth
of various film-funding bodies

and in the maze of the banking system,
managed to support -

beyond any profit logic, happy not to be
out of pocket themselves -

singular, atypical works
against the values of their time.

Works by authentic authors

who are themselves carried
by nothing but their convictions,

their obsessions but also
their limits and their fragilities,

the raw material of their work.

It is this ecosystem,

rephrased time and again
in different cultures and countries,

more or less dependent on cinema-favorable
legislation or patronage,

or on nothing at all, that has kept alive
reflection, research, daring

and, first of all, a form of integrity

that is indispensable
to the best practice of cinema.

We have seen the wave
of streaming cinema grow...

we have seen cinema become an industry,
and this industry become dominant -

and I am hesitant to use the words
"mind-numbing" or "alienating,"

which would have, until recently,
flown quite naturally out of my pen

without even feeling the need
to justify it.

Yet whereas, in another time,
one could dream of cinema as a utopia,

it seems to me that it has become
perfectly dystopian

and that, in the name of entertainment

or whitewashed in conformism
and bland good intentions,

it is essentially devoted
to the perpetuation and flattery

of the most conventional emotions
and of the lowest, if not inane, desires.

In this respect,
I am happy enough when a film,

for lack of a concern with nature,
light and the human,

at least refrains from being harmful.

This is why, deep down, today,

cinema must be made against cinema.

Especially if it wishes to embody,
within the new world of images,

that which is most precious
and most vital:

the freedom to think, to invent,

to search, to wander and to err,

in short to be the antidote we need
so as to preserve our faith

and keep the flame alive,

which it is our duty to know how
to protect and transmit,

generation after generation,

in a battle that is never won.