In 1907, the Fatima’s coochee-coochee dance directed in 1896 by the Edison firm is censored with black bars in order to mask the suggestive pelvis movements of the dancer. This original case of censorship will be the first of a long streak that enamel the History of film.

From 1920, American cinema is governed by the Zukor code, “list of imperative recommendations amongst which the interdiction of indecent situations, the triumph of virtue over vice, the affirmation that an useless exposition of nude is dangerous” (Jean-Luc Douin, Dictionary of censorship in cinema, PUF). At that time, Hollywood had become a symbol of decadence following a streak of scandals. Morals and drugs cases follow and the death of the director William Desmond Taylor, the one by overdose of the actor Wallace Reid and the death of a starlet during one of Roscoe Fatty Arbuckle’sparties , provoking his banishment, lead to the creation of the Motion Pictures Producers and Distributors Association (MPPDA) headed by William Harrison Hays. In the early 30’s, Mae West incurs virtue leagues’ wrath for the salacious allusions scattering her films, Howard Hawks’ Scarface is accused of presenting a far too appealing image of its main character, the Czech movie Ecstasy wherein the future Hedy Lamarr appears entirely naked is seized a few times by American customs for obscenity… The moral stranglehold tightens, and from 1934, every film has to go through the hands of the MPPDA before it can reach the screens. It’s the official birth of the Hays code, adopted by the studios, which will be enforced until 1968. Drugs, sexuality or, even worse, homosexuality, the reconsideration of patriotism or miscegenation are, from now on, banned from movies through 28.000 rules and “revulsing” subjects to avoid. Henceforth, the game will consist, for filmmakers, in evading those principles with metaphors and subterfuges.

To the moral censorship will follow the patently political trial of the “Hollywood Ten” in 1947, accused of being members of the Communist Party by the House Committee on Un-American Activities. The committee has understood the importance of the film industry on the modelling of the mind. And if family, nation and virtue are in its schedule, it is out of question to take a chance on letting communists soak their films with their pernicious ideology. Anticipating legal proceedings, which will bring Dalton Trumbo and his “comrades” to jail, the studios meet and officially decide their excommunication. This double censorship -virtuous and political- will remain as such until the liberalization of the American society from the second half of the 60’s.

(Lire la suite…)

Harakiri (1962) by Masaki Kobayashi.
“It’s a very special film, which was hard to find for years. It’s a film about honour. At the end, the house which dishonoured its tradition erases these shameful events with a pencil strike. Like states do. In the chronicles of this honourable house of a Japanese war chief, they erase all the traces of what happened, of their lost honour. Many events have been erased in countries histories, this is what makes the film important. Honour vanished from republics.”

Synopsis: Following the collapse of his clan, unemployed samurai Hanshiro Tsugumo (Tatsuya Nakadai) arrives at the manor of Lord Iyi, begging to commit ritual suicide on his property. Iyi’s clansmen, believing the desperate ronin is merely angling for charity, try to force him to eviscerate himself -but they have underestimated his honor and his past.

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In 1982, Borja Huidobro, a Chilean architect settled in France, wins with Paul Chemetov the competition of the first architectural project of French President François Mitterrand -the building of the new Ministry of Finance. Since then, both architects took part to most of the national competitions, building the French Embassy in New Delhi and many housing programs or the Montpellier library, among other things. They also ran the renovation of the Natural History Museum in Paris.

In Alone with War and On Borders, Lebanese director Danielle Arbid gives us her vision of the Middle East with frailty and bitterness. Two documentary features linked by the same desire to go meeting people and give a voice to those who never had the chance to speak out. The origin of Alone with War rests upon the need to struggle against the oblivion of a conflict between Christians and Muslims, which have reaped countless lives in Lebanon from 1975 to 1990. Ten years later, the wounds are still deep. Within Beirut, a city that is still rebuilding, the director and her cameraman go to the major places of the Lebanese capital, where the gunshots and the screams of the victims still resonate -a recent slice of History that everyone would rather forget. In a country ruled by silence, Danielle Arbid questions, disturbs and raises sensitive questions buried under the rubble of past wars. The film fastens to put a face on the executioners and let them talk about their acts. Haunted by the crimes they committed, contaminated by the violence to the point where it’s impossible for them to go out unarmed -metaphor of an addiction to combat or merely an inability to fit in a world without war (but not in peace). To the point where one of them can’t stop going to the places of the slaughters he took part to, in order not to forget.

More appeased, but only above the ground, On Borders shows us, as a road movie, a region of which the unusual beauty would almost make us forget the dull and latent violence dwelling it. Around a country which, years after years, remains the center of attention of the modern world, a maelstrom of conflicting emotions and feelings evolves from love to hate, from hate to sadness. Everyone has his own opinion about the name it must bears: Israel or Palestine? From those young people amused by the idea of throwing rocks over the barbed wires to that man going to work everyday through that man from the Hezbollah -with a radical opinion of course-, who claims the word ‘Israel’ is banned from the language of the movement. A story of encounters, whichever the roads take the director, who has adopted the principle never to cross the limits of the Hebrew state, preferring to roam Lebanon, Syria, Jordan up until Egypt.
Sequences in Super 8 give rhythm to the two documentaries with their peculiar grain. The images seem out of time, almost unreal, showing sometimes scenes of everyday life, sometimes the director herself wandering in a Middle-East she doesn’t recognize anymore. A fancy aesthetic emphasizing even more these fascinating films.

Mathieu Col

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Fish Tank (2009) by Andrea Arnold.

“It is a beautiful film, extremely suave, about a teenage love, about a young woman who tries to free herself from her family, from her slightly violent mother. She is slightly decadent and desperately tries to see something else than a mediocre life for her future. She dances. Beautiful slow motions outline the sensuality of hugs between her and her mother’s lover, and the narration slowly evolves into a quite erotic scene where her teenage passions quench. The photography by Robbie Ryan is amazing. The film is shot in a full screen (1:1.77) format instead of a scope format, which provides the film with a family aspect and an interesting intimacy. It’s a film as good as it is beautiful.”

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Son of the actor Manuel Tadros, Xavier Dolan started to play at a very young age. At seventeen, he wrote his first screenplay, I Killed My Mother, and had to wait for three years before he could actually make it -by producing it himself! I Killed My Mother was selected in the 2009 Cannes Film Festival Director’s Fortnight and received the SACD prize. His second feature, Heartbeats, was presented in Cannes in 2010 in the Un Certain Regard section.