For more than fifty years, different French governments tried to build an airport in the Nantes region. The adherence of different groups to the activity of the local population that rejected the infrastructure (and the human and environmental consequences of its implementation) generated a great political and territorial conflict. Given the accumulated wear and tear, derived from the contestation and also from the effective occupation of state lands, Emmanuel Macron’s government announced in 2018 that it was giving up implementing the project during its mandate. The decision was celebrated as a victory for popular mobilization.
After the victory, filmmakers Guillaume Cailleau and Ben Russell approached the area to sign an atypical documentary look at what surrounds that ZAD (zone to defend): direct action. This monumental film, three and a half hours long, could be seen at L’Alternativa Barcelona International Independent Film Festival. The film begins around the desktop of a computer screen, the virtual folders that store videos of resistance, demonstrations, and celebration. These images and situations of activism could have focused the film, but Cailleau and Russell preferred to go another route.
direct action It is a radically observational film. Beyond an initial label, there are no supporting texts or voice-overs to guide the audience. In general, there are not many words (and that magnifies the impact of those that are heard). The filmmakers focus on the images and, with them, affirm a kind of politics (and aesthetics, and poetics) of everyday action. They show us the acts that are possible thanks to the preservation of the ZAD. And, in some way, they reveal in a very material way what the meaning of the struggle is: the lives of the people after the epic response, or in parallel to it.
Cailleau and Rusell’s lens shows us fragments of reality through extended shots, which are usually quite static although camera movements are not excluded. We see two men sowing fields that could have ended up covered in concrete, we see a sky that could be crossed with airplanes. We observe the kneading of bread or the quick and precise preparation of many crepes. We hear protest speeches within the framework of a party that the filmmakers record from outside the venue where it takes place. We also see creation of rappers or pianists. There is no blame for past defeats, nor dependence on the adrenaline rush of combat.
However, the conflict is still there. The last section of the film shows that the struggle continues in Notre-Dame-des-Landes with demonstrations around the use of land and water. That there continue to be police and judicial attempts to dissolve organizations such as the environmental movement Soulèvements de la Terre. We see police projectiles being launched through an (almost) impassive mechanical eye that distances itself from the reporting that runs with the camera in hand. They are different ways, both valid, of capturing reality. But, in times of acceleration of lives and the ways of narrating them, Cailleau and Russell’s perspective has something counterhegemonic.
At the end of the film, the filmmakers show a meeting between several activists and the press. One of the spokespersons speaks of the fear of the State when citizens see that “it is possible to claim the power to act.” Cailleau and Russell continue without offering a journalistic or essayistic device to guide the public. Perhaps it is an implicit invitation to inform yourself carefully. That each viewer is responsible for their own research process complementary to the viewing, immersive without spectacularization (this is not Dunkirkneither Saul’s son), which is offered to us.
Our contradictions
The proposal, of course, is demanding. There are no obvious gratifications, but rather a commitment to austere and subtle enjoyment. Can we delight in the observation of everyday life and its times, without the blurring or resources of hipster advertising that commercializes rural nostalgia by selling us pizzas or industrial beers?
There is often talk of how advisable a collective rethinking of what is historically important would be. To question that the center of human history is wars, conquests and the mandates of (many) kings and (some) queens, to dimension everyday life, community efforts, research. The authors of direct action They seem to go along this line.
His proposal, in any case, can bring out our contradictions as an audience. Placing an uncomfortable mirror in front of us. Maybe we want the story to be told differently, for the world to be different, but we may also want every movie to provide us with generous doses of entertainment. Perhaps we politicized viewers are also hooked on the event, even if it is in a different way than the moviegoer who attends exclusively to the more or less fun mascletás of the blockbuster.
The Mexican director Nicolás Pereda, author of peculiar black comedies such as Faunaspoke within the same L’Alternativa festival about how the audience’s expectations can lead to the closure of possible paths. “Cinema is perhaps the only art in which the majority of its recipients have the feeling of knowing exactly what they want. There is a fairly widespread idea of what movies should be like. I think that in literature or theater more possibilities of style and form are accepted,” he said.
Cailleau and Russell’s film is a challenging example that images do not have to be explicitly directed through a story. It is a demanding sample of other militant cinemas far from the conventions of social dramas or political thrillers that can reach commercial theaters. Some different political audiovisuals that barely appear outside of specialized festivals, although they are often accessible. See the vigorous archival work carried out by Jean-Gabriel Périot in A German youth, or the wonderful (and darkly comic) documental Oeconomyby Carmen Losmann. The authors of direct action They make it a little more difficult, but it may be worth a try.
#years #fight #construction #airport #citizen #triumph #captured #huge #documentary
