


Thankful for Jacob Wren of Radical Cut who has transcribed his notes from "the round-table between Jacques Rancière and Pedro Costa which was part of the conference Image in Science and Art." Take a read, HERE.***
Un Héritier (An Heir)
2011 / 22 min / Color / HD
◎ Synopsis
In 1994, Jean-Marie Straub and Daniele Huillet made a film, Lothringen!, adapting from a novel Colette Bodauche of Maurice Barrès. In 2010, Straub goes to Alsace in France to complete the second film of the Barrès series. At this time, the film is based on the novel, Au service de l'Allemagne, about Mont Saint Odile written in 1903. Like Joseph, the protagonist, Jean-Marie Straub from the Colmar region will be wandering around Mont Saint Odile following the route of a young country doctor. And Straub will be visiting paths leading to the private house of foresters and near the famous wall of the heathen existing in the region, which were also familiar to Barrès.
◎ Director's Statement
1872 - 1918 !
These images of my childhood cause me pain. We others, young Alsatian bourgeois, we grew up in an atmosphere of conspiracy, fear and hatred.
◎ Production date
- Nov. 2010 : In production (shooting)
- Dec. 2010: Post-production
Q&A
1. How do you feel about joining the project, Jeonju Digital Project 2010 and what kind of work you want to deliver through this project?
A narrative film
2. How do you want you as a director and your works to be introduced to Korean audience?
Shamelessly: both as "the survivor of Warsaw" - and as the last of the Mohicans.
4. How would you explain your own style and philosophy when making films?
Challenging the philosophy!
5. Please let us know if there is an on-going project you are currently working on, and your future plan.
Who knows, you never know.
Field Photo productions won best-documentary Oscars two years in a row, Midway and December 7th (1943). The latter, mostly directed by Gregg Toland, initially followed White House directives and made a case for interning the 160,000 Japanese-Americans living in Hawaii, as was being done with the 110,000 Japanese-Americans living on the west coast.
Instead it was decided to leave the Hawaiians alone, after the military governor, General Delos Emmons, supported by the community, resisted Washington's orders. Accordingly, some 50 minutes of December 7th were deleted, now Japanese-American loyalty is stressed, and the portion that remained was exhibited not in theatres but in factories. Virtually all the footage of the Pearl Harbor attack was staged at Fox. (All prior accounts of December 7th's history, including my own, have missed this story completely. Hawaii's successful defiance of Roosevelt is a deeply forgotten event in American history – not surprisingly.)




Hi Andy,
Your exposition of Irving Lerner as an adherent to the Worker's Film and Photo League was important to a better understanding of his work. I find it ironic that the same studio that shamefully crushed distribution of Losey's M eight years before would support Lerner's work - maybe it was the death of Harry Cohn in early 1958 that made it possible for the studio to make pictures with Lerner. Lerner's pictures for Columbia - City of Fear and Murder by Contract are both obsessed with imagery from vehicles and with the specificity of the built landscape.There are so many striking and intelligently photographed images of the automotive landscape in City of Fear, and it seems that Lerner knew the city, or worked with someone who knew the city well. I thought I would contribute three images (out of many) that produce the optical unconscious of the film.
In 1959, California mandated that the Department of Public Health set standards for emission and control of air pollution, so the appearance of air cops would have been a perfect dodge for the Feds. Here we have the scientific police at work, casually sampling the Los Angeles atmosphere for radionucleotides. The insignia and identification of the side of the vehicle: "Air Pollution Control - Enforcement Patrol."
Here is a quasi-pov shot of Vince Ryker, already exposed to a lethal dose of cobalt, cruising through south Hollywood, top down, wind in his hair, and through the windshield, we see a truck ad for Spike Jones Musical Insanities of 1958.
Finally, what may be the slyest of shots, another cruising image, another pov. Despite the exceptional quality of the photography, the pov trope gives some of the film a kind of home movie quality, the quality of being in and examining public space - the same sense we often get from Thom Andersen's films. There is a power to the liberty of this kind of seeing, which is at the other end of the spectrum from surveillance video. The shot is looking downhill at the intersection of Wonderland Avenue and Lookout Mountain Avenue. This is Laurel Canyon, before Morrison, Joni, before John Holmes. And what is fascinating in retrospect is that this location is less than a mile from Lookout Mountain Laboratory, the military's "secret" facility for preparing and processing photography of the U.S. nuclear weapons program. This facility was busy developing images of the Hardtack series of 'plein-air' nuclear detonations (which, in a series of 72 explosions, tested the response of over 18,000 G.I.s to various levels of radiation exposure - more ominous and undisclosed than the testing of prisoners in City of Fear) even as Lucien Ballard was perched in the backseat of this Ford in the hills above the Strip. Just another register of the "vast State secret that rumbles beneath ... the narrative..."
Cicat Cailhronnat


