The first and greatest documentary about Holocaust

The 30 minutes documentary, is in these videos above, so anyone can (and shall) watch it.

Nuit et Brouillard.

A documentary directed by Alain Renais, only 10 years after the end of World War II.

Everything in this movie embarrasses and pleases me. Embarrasses as a human, pleases as a cinema student. The classical music, the green fields, the constant ironies, the calm voice “story teller” of the victim/narrator, the images of bodies that become images of corpses, that become unrecognizable parts of human remains. The picture of pain, that although laconic, leaves the spectator with a long and acute sensation of agony.

I felt guilty like all must feel, not because I was there, not because I was directly responsible for something… I wasn’t even alive.
I feel myself guilty for thinking similarly to many others: At least is over.
But it is not over and it will never finish. While movies like this allow the holocaust to keeps a living creature in our memories, the pain of all who have suffered will continue to be felt and the evilness of the guilty ones will never be forgotten.

The final phrases: “Who’s fault is this? Who’s fault is this? We are all to blame...”

Sans Soleil, Sans Magique

I saw Sans Soleil today, a documentary from the director Chris Marker. The movie is a meditation about memory and shows images from countries like Japan and Guinea, while a woman reads a letter supposedly sent by a cameraman to her. I didn’t like the movie, but I have to admit that I did enjoy some parts. Although I don't agree with some things that are said, the text is very beautiful and results very well with the images. I liked all the references to animals, "each year death takes a panda as dragons do young girls in fairy tales", and I appreciate very much the commentaries and images on Hitchcock's Vertigo.

In a global evaluation I didn't liked the movie mainly because of the editing. I didn't like the long cuts and the black raccord, neither the close-ups of really violent images coming from nowhere. I believe that most of them are random and pointless.
This need from the director to shock the viewers, takes me to my main point about this movie. Although the theme is the memory and the human nature, I believe the plot has a very strong politic message. I don't mind that movies work as political propaganda, but I require that they are clear about it. My father fought in the colonial war in Guinea, and like many others, he was forced to be there. What the movie says about portuguese soldiers, and the sequence of images that connects the war in Guinea to the heartless killing of animals, just upset me very much.

You can read the film narration in english in here.

PS- I saw the movie with english narration, when the original is french. Focusing on Julia Kristeva's ideas about translation, I think the movie looses a lot. You don't need to go further the title to understand this: Sans Soleil sounds much more appropriate that Sunless...

Of Time and the City

Last Thursday I saw the documentary Of Time and the City from the director Terrence Davies. The movie shows images of old and new Liverpool while the director tells stories of his growing up in that context. For me the movie was like a movie-concert. His strong, enigmatic voice, combined with the excellent soundtrack, works like a melody…. What happened to me in this movie was a rare phenomenon that only exists when the movies have a strong poetic message in the text or in the images… I just started to fly into my conscious… I was there, but at the same time I was in many different places… Like Terrence Davies, I visited places of my childhood, I remembered my nights out with my friends and the most important thing: trough the images of children and elders I met with the people I love…
This phenomenon can be understood as a barrier to a total perception of the movie, but in my perspective: it were the “flying away moments” that made the movie such a good experience to me… That’s why I liked it so much…

Question of the day:

Most of the images used in Of Time and the City are archive footages. Understanding that the shooting is a very important part of a director’s vision; can movies like this be catalogue as a different type of documentary?