Documentary Journey to the Land of the Head Shrinkers

Abstract

1. How is one to describe the present situation of in France or in Europe without indicating, at the outset, the nature of its treatment or mistreatment, both here and abroad? Both cause and manner remain to be seen. First, it must once again be made clear that there is no such thing as cinema on the one hand and television documentaries on the other. Vague and variable as it may seem, the category called documentary is central to cinema's history and experience, from the Lumiere brothers and Vertov through Bufiuel, Rossellini, Antonioni, Resnais, or Kiarostami, by way of Flaherty, Franju, and Wiseman, to name only a few. The began as and the as cinema. If Contempt is a of Brigitte Bardot's body (Godard dixit) then every film that makes bodies move (including on the moon or on Baghdad's magic carpets) is based on cinema's power. From the zaniest fictionsthose, say, of the Marx Brothers-to the headiest fantasies (The Wizard of Oz; and, one might propose, Lubitsch's Heaven Can Wait or Demy's Une chambre en ville), nothing is produced in any way other than through the real relation between a given time (that of the recording) and a place (the scene), a body (the actor), and a machine (responsible for recording). Such is the condition, whose combination of these four elements is obviously to be found in most television productions, including serials and films made for television; they all display, willynilly, cinematography's imprint, the certificate of origin.' The filmed encounter of body and machine-both zero degree and primal scene-has been recorded and will be mechanically reproduced to be viewed at a distance, both spatially and temporally, by at least one spectator. This reproducibility of the encounter is the warrant of its reality. Recording provides indefatigable testimony, everlasting proof; it both assures and reassures with respect to the reality of this encounter; it attests to its existence, confers on it the dimension of a real

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