Jacques Kermabon
Patrick et Michèle Bokanowski : à la croisée des mondes
Author(s) Jacky Evrard ; Jacques Kermabon
Format softcover book
Year 2004
Language(s) French
Pages 464 pages
Description
What is a short film? To this simple question, we offer a nuanced, multifaceted answer that opens onto an infinitely composite, nomadic, shifting galaxy. Our ambition is quite simply to help repair an injustice toward this vast continent too often neglected. The palette of this sector is far broader and freer than what the history of feature films can offer. The most classic categories reveal themselves to be particularly protean. To examine the short film is to recall that cinema is irrigated by experimental sap, nourished by the sciences and all the arts, that it can be essay, poem, ethnographic film, amateur footage, pirate porn shown in brothels, fake documentary, propaganda film, committed cinema, film about art, and many other things besides. Illuminating certain filmmakers' careers through this lens brings a new perspective on their cinema, one neglected by most monographs. Highlighting certain short films also redraws another territory, within which emerge forgotten treasures, UFO films, in short, genuine unsuspected works. The short film leads us to venture into poorly charted territories, to broaden our vision of cinema, of cinemas, to discover unexpected beauties, a parallel history (aesthetic, economic, legal...) that sometimes precedes the official history of the seventh art, and which very quickly discourages any ambition of exhaustiveness. An encyclopedia of French short films above all wants to open eyes or, to borrow Jean Vigo's phrase, help "open our eyes." Two indexes, one of names cited (more than two thousand four hundred) and another of titles mentioned (more than two thousand seven hundred) complete this work of reflection.