Editorial
Le Cinéma, cent ans de jeunesse relies on an international network of cultural partners, in particular cinematheques, which participate in the reflection on the educational project as well as in its local coordination (regions, countries). Each year, new coordinators, teachers and directors join this unique network in the field of film education.
Since 2021, the coordination is ensured by the association "Cinéma, cent ans de jeunesse !", in partnership with Documentaire sur grand écran and Ciné 104 in Ile de France, and in collaboration with the DFF - Deutsches Filminstitut & Filmmuseum, in Frankfurt - in the framework of an Erasmus + project "Exploring CCAJ". E*CCAJ involves the Universities of Bremen and Sorbonne Nouvelle-Paris 3 in the network.
With the support of the filmmakers involved in the project and the attention of the ACE (Association of European Cinematheques), the CCAJ is working to obtain the conditions for its perpetuation.
In 2022-23, 38 workshops are set up (schools, colleges, high schools) in 7 regions in France (metropolitan and overseas), and 15 countries in total.
The common thread of the workshops will be the question: "Centred/decentred". A new angle to approach the films, to look at and listen to the shots, (and to think about the history of the CCAJ).
Focus
When writing the script, and then with each scene, and then with each shot, the filmmaker must make decisions about this essential question of cinema creation: "Centred/decentred".
At each stage of the film's creation, he can choose to remain in conformity with the logical centering expected by the spectator.
But there is no obligation for him to mechanically center his scenes and shots on this expectation of conformity and comfort of the spectator.
On the contrary, creating often means thwarting this expectation through a decentering that modifies the perception of the story, the sequence, the shot.
And this at all levels.
At the level of the script: the film does not have to focus on the character whose story it tells. It can also be told on a decentered way by another character who can give a different account of the story.
This other character, who produces the decentering, can be present in the film or simply through his or her voice-over.
In films that do not have a narrator, or a main character, the filmmaker's conduct of the story is also governed by the question of centered/decentered.
Scene level: in many films, the director temporarily abandons the central subject of the situation for the duration of a scene and decenters to a peripheral subject or point of view.
Level of the subject of the scene itself: certain scenes, by their very subject, provoke in many different filmmakers the decentering of the representation.
This is the case of the amorous encounter, of love at first sight, where the ordinary, stable and centered perception of the world is shaken for the character who is the subject. It is he himself who is affected in his representation of the world by the abduction of his ordinary consciousness in the rapture of love.
Level of shots: it often happens that one shot in a sequence resists the continuity of the other shots and decenters our vision of the scene or our habits as spectators.
This decentering can take several forms: an unexpected change of axis, a shift to a very close-up, metonymy (the part for the whole), a sudden change of scenery.
Bresson is undoubtedly the great filmmaker of the decentering of his shots in relation to the classical expectations of the spectator. He theorised his choice to systematically film the part for the whole (hands rather than faces) and the effect instead of the cause.
The shift to an unexpected very close-up sometimes disrupts the sense of the homogeneity of the world and space. Buñuel often explored this effect of decentering the homogeneous perception of reality. Shifting to very close-ups of insects as another parallel world. But also Godard and Kiarostami.
In the 1950s, the camera would pan towards the fireplace or the window when the two lovers were about to embrace on the bed: decentering a shot was also a way of thwarting censorship for a long time.
Alain Bergala
|
