There is a resurgence of interest in experimental film and video in France. But who will benefit from the revival, asks curator and fiImmaker, Yann Beauvais

The cinema scene in France is undergoing change. Traditional cinema is in crisis with numerous cinemas in Paris and the provinces closing. So many of these picture palaces have become Palaces of Consumption, catering for other dreams.

In the experimental scene, however, there is a feeling of enthusiasm as more theatres screen this type of work. There is a resurgence of interest in experimental, documentary and independent cinema which, for the filmmakers, is simultaneously positive, stimulating and disquieting. For, in situations like these, the established figures return, that is, the beneficiaries are those which history has already designated. This is one of the dangers or weaknesses of the revival. For the younger generation of filmmakers, or at least those who have appeared on the scene since the early 1980s, the benefits of the revival are yet to be realised.

Experimental cinema in France, although institutionally recognised, is not subsidised in the same ways as it is in other countries. There are few subsidies for production, unless the project is considered to fall within the field of the visual arts. Likewise, there are no subsidies for distribution outside France, as is the case in Great Britain with the Arts Council of Great Britain or in Germany with the Goethe-Institut. Subsidies do exist, however, for distribution: Light Cone, a film co-operative with 900 titles in its collection founded in 1982 by Miles McKane and myself; or the Paris Film Co-op and Cinedoc (with 250 films), founded in 1974. In addition to these distribution groups, programming organisations receive grants, such as Scratch Projection or the Archives of Experimental Film in Avignon, allowing them to organise weekly screenings or to participate in special events. In this way, various projects such as festivals or specialised thematic programs take place. Similar support is given to the publication of books or catalogues on experimental film. Some emanate from large institutions, others the result of courageous initiatives by independent editors such as Paris Experimental. A restoration project of experimental films has recently been launched by Light Cone, with the agreement of the Centre National du Cinema and the Film Archives de la Bois d'Arcy. This ambitious program involves the restoration of Super 8 and 16mm works from the 1970s (which will then go onto the distribution circuit), as well as historical works from the 1920s, previously available only to archivists.

In line with what is occurring in experimental cinema in other parts of the western world, there is no dominant aesthetic but rather many cinematographic perspectives and styles. The time of the avant garde as a dominant category with decrees of modernity has passed. Nowadays, the aesthetic is defined by a fragmented constellation of practice. A multiplicity of different practices, which were formerly mutually exclusive, now exist side by side. Freed from the historical and aesthetic quarrels that dogged the French scene until the beginning of the 1980s, new filmmakers can establish a new topography for French experimental cinema. In the next few paragraphs I shall try to illustrate these principal tendencies.
Lately there has been a return to the concerns of the 'nouvelle vague': small production units, disnarrative and a focus on the identity of a character often played by the filmmaker. The pathway to an existential quest happens through narration, as in the works by American and French filmmakers of the late 1950s. Parallel to this practice, which no longer regards narration as a taboo, is the development of a more personal cinema which transcends formalism, a Iyricism normally found only in 'diary' films. A genre still relevant is exposed through a diversity of techniques-an attachment to a place, district or city, the subjective eye of the filmmaker-and is etched into a global overview, be it through political, sexual or social issues.

It is for this we can appreciate the work of the group Barbes Rochechour Art, formed in the late 1970s, which established a comprehensive map of places and exceptional people in Paris. A similar attitude, albeit indirectly, can be found in the group Molokino which expresses itself as much by places as by its participants. Jakobois (from Barbes RochecourArt) continues, in a personal way, to produce diaries and cine-poems, sketching maps of his everyday desires and pleasures. In a similar vein, Melhi replies to the characteristics of the group Molokino by overlaying his Super 8 images with sound poems. Within this type of filmmaking all social strata are present; through the use of 'found' imagery the excluded become visible, the 'voices off' are seen. We are faced with humanity in all its splendour and all its misery, allowing us to perceive some of these films as documents of a history that is beginning to dissolve without a trace of specific representation.

Essential film laboratories, services and stocks have disappeared over the last few years, to the advantage of video and new technologies. The new filmmakers can be characterised by their desire to control, to a greater extent than in the past, the different stages of production. Alternative laboratories favouring a new approach to the materiality of film and at the same time questioning the conditions of production, consumption and distribution of moving images are beginning to appear. This could explain the use of found footage, be it pornographic with Frederic Charpentier and Melhi, televisual with Beatrice Slazak and Maurice Lemaitre, or odds and ends with Cecile Fontaine, who has become the mastermind of a 'cinema povera'. A greater part of her work falls within the 'field' of recycling and the editing of dif ferent emulsion layers which make up colour film. It is a 'minor' cinema in the sense that she does not use special technology such as cameras, optical printers, etc, but the very materiality of the medium itself. An aesthetic and a playfulness are rendered through this radical transformation of the medium's materiality, all the while incorporating an awareness of film his tory. Fontaine takes an active position in the defence of graphic cinema, as does Francoise Thomas, by scratching, re-photographing and colouration. The practice of the group Metamkine is a continuation of this. They have developed techniques of re-filming to reinforce their performance activities which, in turn, combine film and music. Over the last three years they have made the scene more dynamic by creating a projection room, laboratory and exhibition space under the same roof. Here is the premise of an activity which escapes both the institutional and the academic, and favours the vital element of marginality which is essential for, and within, exper imental cinema.

This does not inhibit the 'chiselling' of Lettrist cinema, which continues its activities by way of 'discourses', or 'film-actions'. Maurice Lemaitre remains the emblematic figure, and it is through his activity and the younger generation's interest for the films of the 1950s and 1960s that Lettrism finds itself in the spotlight. This can only serve to strengthen the links between the visual arts and cin ema, distancing experimental film a little further from Hollywood and an industry of televisual concerns. Experimental cinema can be felt as a repercussion to current advertising and independent production, a reaction to its existence, rather than an overt desire on the part of its filmmakers to make inroads to this sector. The avant garde does not go to Hollywood; Hollywood desperately seeks surrogate images, free from the codes of narrative archetypes. It is claimed that certain practitioners, such as Alain Raoust, adapt their forms of expression to fit their projects. It cannot be said, however, that experimental cinema is of primary importance to the condition of narration, save for the fact that it is a tradition of independence and can therefore serve as a model for future cinematography.

In this extremely turbulent field of contemporary French cinema, certain individuals such as Jean Michel Bouhours, Rose Lowder, Maria Klonaris and Katerina Thomadaki continue their connections with film production. In their most recent films, these filmmakers have stepped into a new territory of filmmaking. Rose Lowder confronts two different types of landscape, one industrial, the other 'natural', without abandoning the question of spatial perception through cinematographic means. Filmmakers from a previous generation who once questioned their practices are opening onto new areas and exploring new voices. After working for a long period with diary films, Vivian Ostrovsky now confronts the relationship between dance and cinema; a complex relationship given that the means of expression in each discipline differ so greatly. Her latest film is in two distinct parts, each from different cinematographic perspectives.

The first section is experimental, the filmmaker's response to six productions by a choreographer. This is an impressionist approach, as opposed to the second section which uses a documentary approach to focus on a single production. The convergence of these two approaches within the same film produces a strange hybrid, held together by a state of hiatus close to that of a raised foot ready to step forward. This confrontation, and state of hiatus, leads us to another filmmaker, Martine Rousset, who for many years has elaborated on an 'oeuvre' showing the rela tionship between literature and cinema. The result is temporal expansion and luminous flashes; speech, heard only at the moment when colour dissolves. It is within this period of tension, between saying and seeing, that the filmmaker leads cinema towards literature, by-passing the anecdote or narration, profiting pure visual events, evoking those moments of Debussy where music becomes speech and speech becomes song. This voice is very often feminine, with its inherent silences containing a certain violence, which can only be compared to flashes of light and colour, fading to black. Jean-Claude Mocik has similar formal and conceptual concerns. He is also one of the few filmmakers to use different tools, such as video, HDTV, 35 andl6 mm film, which allows him to adapt to the specific requirements of each action.

It should be noted that France lacks a militant experimental cinema as can be found in Anglo Saxon countries. There are, however, numerous women making films, but within this group the primary motivation is no longer feminist. The same can be said for the gay filmmakers who seem to have lost their militant tendency, as if they were no longer victims of a blatant exclusion accentuated by the return to power of a strong right-wing. There is, however, a certain awakening of consciousness, with attention focusing on certain issues. The confront tion of individual filmmakers with AIDS has revealed a diversity of responses. I will take two films by way of example, that of Miles McKane (Broken Blossorns) and my own (Sid aids). One gives a highly charged emotional response of a visual artist towards the ephemeral and fragile aspect of the human condition. The other approach is more an attack against the French state, of its blatant policy of exclusion. One underlines mediation while the other throws at the viewer 'agit-prop'.

There is a similar attitude among many gay and women filmmakers, a similar commitment where her or his difference is stated without the necessity for a dogmatic discourse. This type of approach, which seems to refute an idea of community, is specifically characteristic of films 'made in France'. Cinema is no longer an instrument of political activism, and was rarely linked in the past to any kind of militancy. This leads to the conclusion that despite the current 'crossbreeding' of practices, there remains a division within moving image production which will be diffi cult to overcome. Is this a reflection of the political crisis affecting France, or is it a reflection of the sacrosanct Cartesian division which deems everything must remain separate?

If methods do overlap, they have not yet reached a point where opposition becomes an associate of mili tancy and cinema, as was the case of the gay activist Lionel Soukaze in the 1970s. Filmic genre is no longer restrictive, implying the possibility of a renewed approach-at present, in its early stages, it is difficult to predict its development. Let us hope that the institutionalisation of experimental cinema, as a highly valued cultural activity, will not lead to aridity in contemporary production; for the benefit of those ready to hold back the pages of history to the moment in time when they were 20 years old.

Y a n n B e a u v a i s was born in Paris in 1953. He lives and works in Paris and has made over 20 expermental films (including multi screens), some of which are in collections in the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris. He is co-founder of Light Cone Distribution Co-op; Serat Revue, a bilingual magazine on historical and contemporary cinema, and Scratch Projection, an experimental cinema programming group. He is a programmer for a number of European museums, including the Musee National d'Art Moderne, and the American Centre in Paris.

© Yann Beauvais, MESH#4 Spring, 1995. MESH film/video/media/art is the journal of Experimenta Media Arts

The time of the avant garde as a dominant category with decrees of modernity has passed. Nowadays, the aesthetic is defined by a fragmented constellation of practices. A multiplicity of practices, which were formerly mutually exclusive, now exists side by side. Freed from the historical and aesthetic quarrels that dogged the French scene until the beginning of the 1980s, new filmmakers can establish a new topography for French experimental cinema. This program illustrates these principal tendencies.

This personal film juxtaposes representations of a city with on its sound track, autobiographical fragments. The distance of memory.

The outbreak of AIDS unleashed media hysteria in favour of moral ordeK Faced with the denunciation, victimi sation and discrimination of people living with AIDS, this film attempts to articulate a condemnation of the use the media makes of the illness by means of a specific visual form. The form is a 'cine-tract'. The film reveals itself through its oration, it is in fact a film of words.

The use of text distances the effects being described, these re-introduced by the appear ance and treatment of the words which condition the reading of the film. Here is the violence of the film, which literally complements the act of denunciation.

The film attempts to suggest an emerging reflection on AIDS while remaining within the practice of experimental cine ma. (Yann Beauvais)

A text by Katherine Mansfield is superimposed over simple imagery that contrasts blues with whites, harsh light with clear light. 'A look at the light in the voice, a luminous transfusion of style.'

A cinematic metaphor conceived for an AIDS compilation film, the film is an 'emotional translation' of the sickness. The juxtaposition of music and images produces conflicts between eiements which would appear meaningless if separated.

Childhood memories, or more precisely memories of the rituals of Sunday with the family: mass, family picnics, afternoons by the sea.

A series of films, each one minute in length. Structured frame by frame in the camera, this project evolved into a filmic bouquet, by picking and gathering graphic elements and weaving them into an alternative order.

When I first saw Mathilde Monnler dance with Jean Francois Duroute in Pudigue Acide/extasies (at the Avignon Festival in 1986), I was impressed by the originality, irony and strength of their work. After Mort de Rire (1987), Monnler and Duroute split to form their respective companies and I focused on Mathilde Monnler, filming six of her choreographic works between 1988 and 1991: Je ne vois pas la femme cachee dans la foret, A la renverse, Sur le Champ, Solo, Cheval de Quatre, Face Nord.

Having worked on several diary films, I wanted to try something different; I chose to observe the elaboration of each production over a long period of time, the camera a witness at rehearsals, costume fittings, backstage events and opening nights. The film, made over a period of four years, is divided into two parts. Part one (shown here), shot in Super 8 and blown up to 16 mm, covers five productions and is an interpretation of what I saw and heard, edited in a impressionistic and experimental way. (Vivian Ostrovsky)

Fragments of a text written by Clarice Lispector whispered in Brazilian and French. Music by Olivier Messaien (In the Garden of Love's Sleep).

Palm trees in Cannes-sur-mer. The tight and rapid camera movements play with light and create an abstract film in which other forms and matters are revealed. The 'camera brush' paints vibrant strokes on the canvas, engraving in movement the madness and sensuality of a small fragment of a Mediterranean landscape.

'In our ever-changing world, Blachon prompts us to re examine our sense of "What is and what lsn't. By doing so, we find ourselves frolicking with our past and our future." Anne Kelly "A very personal film. A very unpretentious film. But a film that is full of mystery and poetry And a very strong erotic energy. There is in it, I could feel in it this strong erotic poetry, energy, irrationality that boarded on Fireworks and Rimbaud and etc, and etc ..." Jonas Mekas