The rediscovery of Feuillade had a double effect: on the one hand, it rewrote cinema history, for Feuillade was a forgotten figure in France and was unknown in Great Britain and America. The other effect was Feuillade’s influence

——————————————-

“The rediscovery of Feuillade had a double effect: on the one hand, it rewrote cinema history, for Feuillade was a forgotten figure in France and was unknown in Great Britain and America. The other effect was Feuillade’s influence on directors like Resnais, Franju, and Rivette, whose original thirteen–hour version of Out One especially seems to show that influence. Up to 1944, it had often been said that the French cinema had two traditions—Méliès and Lumière, fantasy and reality, or what you will. But Feuillade became, as Francis Lacassin put it, the Third Man, and filmmakers were struck by the mixture of realism and surrealism in his work.”

From Richard Roud’s 1983 biography of Henri Langlois, aptly titled, ‘A Passion for Films’.

The following narrative seeks to trace the rise from the ashes of oblivion of Peter M.Zolka, the great German filmmaker. The narrative seeks to present its reader with an exhaustive amount of accumulated and assorted material from various different sources: film magazines, personal journals, lifestyle magazines, hitherto confidential files from the cultural ministry, letters from a friend to another etc. One may find the unusual construction of the narrative, much like an ambitious graphic novel, a tad too disjointed to follow, but I seek to assure you that a straightforward narrative may not serve the purpose of being able to clearly elaborate on Zolka’s ressurection in the popular realm, and instead of presenting the sheer joy of discovery that the following first-person accounts reek with; will only be lost in my discovery of their discoveries. It is thus, a montage of newsreel footages, and not a documentary. It is material whose origin is spread over a period of 75 years that begin with a solemn admission of regret and end with a solemn admission of respect.

While one may argue that the narrative is fictional, the events it details are not.

……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

Part I : A Filmmaker’s Regret

Following is a letter written by the filmmaker, Herr. Peter M. Zolka himself, at the onsurge of the Nazi search for the superman, written in a Berlin apartment; meant to be sent to a friend called ‘Max’ in America. (Reports have suggested that the Max in question is infact, his friend, Max Goering, the famous actor).

April 29^th, 1938

My dear Max;

It is with a rather tired pair of hands that I write this letter to you. Exhausted by their unending contribution to the service of a life that has demanded resilience, perseverance and patience; but has never paid proportional dividends. It is with a trembling pair of hands that I write this letter to you. For they remain apprehensive of the nature of each event that precedes a knock on the door of their house, or footsteps that do not correspond to the usual rhythm of the passer-bys on the cobblestone street outside. For who knows when my religious identity becomes someone else’s obstruction in his path to attainment of a superman race. Finally, it is with the same pair of hands that I write to you; that enjoined at the tip of their respective thumbs twenty three years ago on a film set, to discover the prospective beauty of a frame in which an actor’s face is enclosed within a more suffocated space. Griffith called it the close-up. They called him its discoverer. I, on the other hand, dwell in oblivion.

However, I have made films. I am the director of cinema. I have spent an entire life allowing silver nitrate particles on a plastic base to respond to light falling on them. I have spent an entire life cutting film negatives in dark spectral rooms at midnight and splicing them together so as to attain the satisfaction of creating a beautiful fraud – the schwindel they call cinema. I have seen Marlene Dietrich perform in A Blue Angel and Sternberg direct her.

And yet, am I content? Is my life but a series of sporadic bursts of such experiences, such revelations, and opportunities to watch Metropolis play out on the screen; or is it merely a collection of all the regret for the missed opportunities, envy for those who didn’t miss them, and remorse for a talent I never felt appreciated (or consummated), that punctuated these occasions?

Max, as I write this to you, I can see the Müggelberge span out from the tiny window in my wall. (How lovely was it to shoot Die Forst  Fahrt there in 1925? We attempted to shoot the sun directly, the film burnt). It looks so pretty at night, as the fog surrounds its periphery, like ancient Mayans worshipping their lord. I am reminded of my days as a gaffer on Wegener’s The Golem, which was shot on a soundstage near the Müggelberge. Gigi and I would escape from the shoot everyday to it to make love. Its presence is overwhelming, and I confess I have often felt like a film actor in front of it; the mountain being the camera. It merely stands there, sturdy and firm, witness to each second that takes place in front of it, assuring eternality to the object of its witness, and lending immortality to those lucky enough to acquire a contact with it (Like the ravines of Müggelberge still echo Gigi and my hushed whispers). Do you remember why we left the Das Kafeehaus theatre group to join cinema industry? It was because we remained assured of our permanence; of the allocation of an apartment on history’s boulevard that no one but we would occupy.

And yet, am I permanent? Is Peter M. Zolka permanent? Would anyone a hundred years from now watch Die Forst Farht like they would watch City Lights or M? Would they applaud the ingenuity of my close-up as they celebrate Gish’s beauty in The Birth of a Nation? Would they mimic the slur in my voice as they do with Lang’s monocle?

And again, as is often, the Müggelberge helps dawn the realisation of my true stature on me. Who am I, but a forgotten ageing Jewish filmmaker whose relevance has been dwarfed by Reifenstahl’s achievements, a middle-aged lover of cinema who is ignored by friends at taverns, too ashamed to even share a beer with him, or the unfortunate residue of a film movement that shone bright before its greatest exponents rushed westwards? What permanence do I talk about, when I remain unsure about even the very existence of my films, as they decompose in UFA’s storage houses?

If they do locate my apartment on the boulevard of history somehow, years from now, they will find it completely abandoned, I remain certain; and move on to one where the light in the dining hall still shines. And the name plate on the front door of that apartment would certainly read Fritz Lang, or Sergei Eisenstein, or D.W.Griffith.

Lastly, I wish to congratulate you on your recent successes with Laemmle. Remind him of the promise he made to me lest he gets occupied in the revelry of his universal glory. Times are sad here, and I foresee oblivion for myself and millions like me. In hindsight, my adamancy in regard to choosing Berlin over Sunset Boulevard was a huge mistake.

Always a well-wisher, and your favourite director in the world(unless your preferences have changed and I stand to lose my sole fan in the world)

Yours sincerely,

Peter M. Zolka

………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

The celluloid is the refuge of spectral apparitions and ethereal phantoms; for it violates the first basic fundamental of the very human condition it seeks to record. Through its property of being able to captivate particles of light to draw patterns on itself, in the process enabling itself to create a document of what exists in the direction in which the camera points, the celluloid manages to transcend the confinement of age. It is the house of ghosts, for it allows Louis Le Prince to still ‘exist’, 121 years after Roundhay Garden Scene. And yet, is the photographed image of Le Prince, Le Prince himself? Is his filmic representation a substitute for the person himself? Is it not that when we watch The Philadelphia Story, it is only a depiction of the appearance of Cary Grant we see, and not Cary Grant himself? The recorded image is essential because it contains within itself the ability to not merely record a point in the history, but through the choice of the subject it chooses to record, it also renders the viewer powerful enough to access another history – that of the subject – and that is true of atleast the documentary film. For instance, the old woman who passes by the camera in the 1895 Lumiere brothers film, L’Arrivée d’un train à La Ciotat, is old enough to have witnessed the Crimean War. Is it that the film captures only her countenance but not also simultaneously provoke the viewer to contemplate the passing of time (and the events during it), that led the features of her body to form into that countenance? In that, the film is not merely a photographic document of a subject’s existence, but also a portal into it.

And yet, as American avant-garde auteur Scott Cummings points out in an opinion that lies in conjunction with the ingenious cinematographer of some of his films, Siska Yunic, “Film is worth shooting on because it resembles the human cycle of life. It is born in a factorthe ingenious cinematographer of some of his films, Siska Yunic, “Film is worth shooting on because it resembles the human cycle of life. It is born in a factory somewhere, is in a situation of prime usability, is used, begins decomposing, fades, scratches, and then, ultimately, dies.” That is true, but it is also in the completely opposite function of film – that of its capability of permanence, as detailed in the modern Japanese masterpiece Deep in the Valley, that the exclusivity of the filmic image lies. And even then, isn’t the filmic image different from the vehicle that carries it? The filmic image is an abstract idea, whereas the celluloid is a tangible object that the abstract idea resides on.

Therefore, if I were to try defining film preservation (or restoration), it is the reconciliation of the tangible object and the abstract idea – the effort to preserve the tangible object so as to safeguard the original intention of the abstract idea it carries. The abstract idea could thus be, in the form of a series of images, a cultural artifact (The Battle of Algiers, Pather Panchali), a political climate (Woodstock, Triumph of the Will), a topography (The Man with a Movie Camera, Koyaanisqatsi).

And due to the virtue of the cinematic medium also being an art form, the preservation of an old film is essentially the act of the measurement of evolution – both of the subject it captures and of the medium itself – through the opportunities it provides of comparision. Unless a film is a period film, and seeks to depict the era in which it is produced, by the very act of shooting the landscape of the city it is set in, it provides a chance to place the film besides a film placed in the same city a hundred years ago, and trace an evolution; which is a point that only seeks to strengthen the aforementioned claim that cinema does not merely record the subject at a given moment in time, but also the passing of time that preceded that moment. Consider the England of BlowUp and the one of Traffic Crossing Leeds Bridge. And yet, the opportunity of comparison allows the ardent viewer to trace the aesthetic evolution of the medium itself – the film stocks, the reducing ASL, the aspect ratios, and the saturated colours, being cases in point.

Much of this opportunity to compare, today, can thus be owed to the greatest cinephile to have lived, Henri Langlois.

…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

Part II : A Film Archivist’s Delight – Two Personal Journal Entries from the journal of Roger Tacchella

The following exhibit(s) in the narrative are two entries made in his personal journal, by the legendary film archivist and founder of La Ville Du Cinema, Roger Tacchella, made in 1942, at the height of the German occupation of France. The diary was retrieved from the bottom of a beer barrel in a tavern where the absent-minded Tacchella had hidden it in 1947, and then, like everything else except films, forgotten to retrieve it. It remained in the possession of the tavern owner until this reporter sought it (read: bought it).

1.

23^rd Mai 1942

The tiny window in my wall affords me a glance at a portion of the Champs-Élysées, visible only through the small separation between the almost enjoined walls of two apartments. It looks beautiful, as usual. And yet, it does not seem mine. I do not own it as I own the chair I sit to write on, or the table my diary is placed on; or how I owned its sight till that fateful day in 1940. Why? Because my beloved Elysees is only in the deep focus background of the glance my window affords me, like the butlers in La Regle De Jeu. In the foreground, concealing most of the cobblestones, each witness to a different phase of my life, is a Nazi Sturmmann who uses a cigarette to let his smoke mix with the Paris fog and let a part of him submerge into the Parisienne atmosphere forever.

We’ve had to live in fear since Schutzstaffel officer Kluge (I remain uncertain of his rank) sought residence in our apartment complex. Goebbels’ Third Reich has consistently sought to admonish the films by American, British and French masters; only seeking to promote the cinematically gifted (how she freezes the frame in Triumph of the Will, and yet the frozen frame shows Hitler), yet ideologically stilted films of Fraulein Reifenstahl. It means that we have to stifle the sound of The Night Mail or It Happened One Night; and only stare in silent admiration, that of a projectionist in the safety of his chamber, able to only watch the visuals and not hear a sound; lest Monsier Kluge may want to interrupt our evening revelry with sounds distinctly reminiscent of Hawks’ Scarface.

Even then, Vincent and I had only a narrow escape today. Since the day the siege has begun, all cinephiles in Paris have taken an oath to converge upon Section 42 of the catacombs whenever a danger is posed to the safety of our collective l’amour – notre cinema. As luck would have it, as Monsier Kluge passed our room by last night, he happened to notice a distinct flicker of blue underneath our door and as is the case these days with the Germans, his response was not to knock gently on our door like a civil neighbor and inquire as to the nature of this spectral light, but arrange a party of SS soldiers to raid our apartment and check for ‘any piece of culture that threatens to challenge or supersede (or encourages to); the Aryan authority’. Perhaps that is why Monsieur Hitler is so in love with a seemingly harmless Mickey Mouse. In any case, as the news of the troopers’ raid reached our grief-stricken and deprived (of Leigh’s murmurs) ears, we packed our 35mm film stocks in a potato sack and threw it downstairs to Georges, who has forever been friendly in helping out with our endeavor; much like Limpy is to Harold in Safety Last!.

As Vincent and I crawled down the apartment building wall clinging on to the sewage pipe, we collected the potato sack from Georges on the first floor and made our way to Section 42 in the catacombs. As is the case often, we met the shabbily dressed, arrogant and yet pleasing Henri there. He had his own collection of films to ‘dump’ there. He has the most films from amongst us. We were informed of how one of our beloved friends, mon ami Richard had crossed over into Switzerland. Thus, he had left his ‘collection’ at Section 42 behind him, never to be attended to, lost in certain oblivion in the underground moisture of the catacombs. Henri and I decided to divide the films amongst ourselves. As it turned out, there were only three films, two of which there are ample copies of – Vertov’s The Man With a Movie Camera and Mizoguchi’s Naniwa Elegy (how it resembles the films of Murnau). The third, however, is a stranger at the saloon bar – the one no one knows but everyone is curious about. The film stock case informs us it is called Die Forst Farht or The Forest Adventure.

Never heard of it. Will play it once Monsier Kluge had satisfied his appetite for sadism.

2.

20^th Jun 1942

The diary entry will be short for the want of time needed to make a hasty escape. And yet, it will be made nonetheless to ensure documentation of our travails. George has disappeared. One was always suspicious of his links to the Resistance.

Things are getting tougher here, they are. Why? Because the German presence in Paris has taken upon itself to erase all proof of the existence of Capra, Flaherty, Vadim, Paradjnov, and even Bunuel. Do they realize how futile their efforts are? For how do they propose to erase cinema? Can they render their Müggelberge extinct even if all their National Socialist tendencies conspire? Lumiere would record their desperation, and Méliès would mock them with his sardonic farce. As long as there is a screen and a projector, on any planet in any century, Chaplin’s The Gold Rush will remain immortal.

But other things sadden me as well. And perplex me. For example, where is Monsieur Zolka now? The magician who made Die Forst Fraht. Oh, the glory of that film. Can the Parabellum of the German SS ever defeat the joy of Fraulein Brigit Von Hammersmarck as she swings from one tree to another? The answer is no.

Dare I commit the confession to the pages of this diary that if given a chance to save merely three films from my collection if Monsieur Kluge were to break down the door at this very instant, I would save Nanook of the North for cinema as a bystander, Sunrise for cinema as an intruder, and Die Forst Fraht for cinema.

……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

In 1936, Henri Langlois, alongwith his friends Jean Mitry and Georges Franju founded the cinema museum now famous as Cinematheque La Francaise. The exercise of foundation was similar to the declaration of love, a marriage proposal or a discovery of faith; for the institution could acknowledge better than any other filmmaker in those days, or in the present; the original conception of the idea of cinema – that of a community. As time passes, and cinema becomes reduced to a status symbol or an exotic umbrella sourced from a foreign land the ownership of which grants the owner a position superior to his envious neighbour, it was Langlois who truly understood the only quality that remains truly intrinsic to cinema, that of enabling its audience to share a common experience. While Beethoven’s ‘Historia De Amor’ is a magnificent piece of music, I can only vaguely pass on the idea of its excellence to a friend, and I can only attempt a description of the mystery of Mona Lisa’s smile to a fellow enthusiast; but cinema does not permit such discrepancy between experiences, for we are all witnesses to the same event – the screen – like witnessing a murder would cause all of us disgust, an act of injustice would provoke rage, and the sight of an old woman evoke nostalgia. Langlois was thus, the first, to understood that cinema’s future lay, not in the great films, its great exponents; for those were but a part of the grander schema – but through the sheer force of collective discovery.

“Whenever I visit a theatre, I only hope to occupy the middle seat of the last row, for that allows me to take a light nap, and smile, as I hear the audience laugh together, or cry together at a scene”

Jean-Luc Godard

Langlois’s love manifested itself not in the extension of the cinematic tradition, but in its celebration. His undying love for the medium did not cause him to pick up a camera himself and begin shooting in all directions with the lunacy and desperation of a soldier in the war who has just lost his closest friend, but in the meticulous distribution of bullets among all the other soldiers of the unit, so that the eventual war could be won. In that, Langlois was similar to a young child who finds it hard to curb his enthusiasm upon the discovery of an old secret, and rushes to share it with his friend. He was a cinephile not because he loved films, for cinema finds itself at such an inextractible position today in the modern life, that each one of our neighbours is a fan of some type of film; but because his effort lay in the direction of dispersing the joy of his discovery to others. To achieve that, he would maniacally collect all the films he could, like Joseph Brodsky would accumulate pieces of literature from the trash to read. And much like Brodsky, Langlois’s status as an artist of the form was not subservient or even reliant on his own contribution to it, but to his commemoration of others’ contributions. Like Brodsky loved Akhmatova, Langlois loved Feuillade. And yet, a case could strongly be made for Langlois’s stature as a cinema maker himself, for isn’t the expression of such vehement love that forces one to introspect their own stance towards the object of that love, an act of ‘creation’ in itself?

“One can serious lay the claim down that Henri Langlois is one of the greatest cinema geniuses, for he instituted a new way of seeing movies”

Jean-Luc Godard

………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

3. The Argument Across the English Channel

The following pieces of film writing, taken from the esteemed journals Vingt Quatre, and Penthesilia, French and British respectively, seek to detail the discovery of Zolka’s films by two cinephiles in their respective nations, and thus, their naturally opposing stands on it. And the opposition derived not out of a disagreement on the quality of Zolka’s films, but on its inherent meaning.

I:

Juliet 1958, Vol XII, Issue 7, Vingt Quatre

Following is an Excerpt from the film article entitled Les plus belles escroqueries du monde (The World’s Most Beautiful Swindlers), by then young film critic Pierre Pastor (now a Golden Bear winning senile old man) which seeks to discuss the construction of the fraud in cinema.

…And yet, cinema stands on the brink of a glance over the edge of the cliff. For long, it has safely secured a post on the plateau of the cliff, assured in the refuge it’s sheer magnanimity offers it. It has met each demand for an aesthetical upheaval in recent years with an expansion of scale. In that, its response to each voice calling out for an introspection for its nature has not been correspondence, but suppression. Not attendance, but oppression. The businessmen who remain ever so keen to exercise their hegemonic authority over cinema have adopted a fascist autocratic stance in dealing with the most major problem that  faces the beautiful medium today – a stale objective.

Cinema, for long, has excused itself from any discussion that seeks to locate its objective, its inherent properties, its nature, its possibilities and limitations by stating its novelty as an artform – and explaining how it still dwells in infancy when the artforms it is compared to – painting, literature or vaudeville – have been allowed periods of a century or two to discover the aforementioned. And yet, this excuse doesn’t stand true anymore – for cinema is not completely, and in its original conception, completely an artist’s medium. It is not in eternal servitude to the whims of an individual, whether a painter, an author or a theatre director; or the respective art critic – and is in fact, a blotting paper that soaks the ink that is a yield of the entire world that surrounds the sound stage – the cultural upheavals, the political transformations, the shifts in audience shifts, wars, famines, genocides, migrations, and most importantly, technological innovations. Yes, it might seem unfair, but cinema remains eternally obliged to be subservient to these factors that might influence its production – and while a painter might seek to paint like Raphael did 400 years ago, a cinema director has to change. Thus, subsequently, the medium has to as well, correspondingly. Cinema, thus, cannot afford itself the luxury of a century or two to discover its intrinsic properties, and has to dwell in a constant state of introspection. As the great British-American director Alfred Hitchcock said, “Cinema is loved by the masses. That is both the gift to the medium, and its curse.” And that is true, for cinema is like a prodigal talent to the parents that are its audience. It has to perform. Now, or the parents would completely lose hope.

And yet, there is hope. Through the consistent work of Vingt Quatre, Cahiers Du Cinema and Positif in France; we now see a possibility of a time when cinema does not respond to each challenge by expanding the width of its screens. Or introducing a new lens that can shoot a wider territory. Through our work, we remain assured that cinema will reciprocate through contemplation and not argument. And in this, we must not rely on Hollywood, for that remains the refuge of the blissfully ignorant; where agents run the show, and lawyers decide the films that are made. I hear also that cinema in India is slowly moving to adopt the model of Hollywood. I wonder about Ray, whose cinema is to India what Night and Fog is to the concentration camp – its mirror. At the end, Hollywood claims one thing and we claim another . Who is right? Of course, us.

The Wild Animal – Zolka

The Rue De Biellot grounds stay abuzz with speculation about (Francois) Truffaut’s arrival. He is the rancorous, arrogant, precarious young critic from our contemporary Cahiers and the proponent of the politique des auteurs, and one of Paris’s most hated men. And yet, I cannot wait to join him in the front row of La Ville Du Cinema, the film collection initiated by Vincent De Mille and Roger Tacchella in 1937. The film they will screen is one we have watched a hundred times already – their exclusive set-piece, the one they reveal when the competition becomes biting, and the threat of emptiness looms over the seating facilities – German director Peter M. Zolka’s Die Forst Farht or The Forest Adventure, purported to have been produced sometimes in the early 1920’s, the same time F.W.Murnau and Fritz Lang were onto their own legends. And yet, as is often the case on a film set, the placement of a lamp decides what objects would be concealed within the dark shadows and which ones would be illuminated for our perusal (Harry Lime comes to mind). As Dr.Caligari and Mabuse gained popularity, Zolka’s legendary warrior princess Delga (Hammersmarck, perfect), was lost in the dark shadows. And now, we have the honour of witnessing the film from the front row of a packed hall at La Ville Du Cinema. Delga’s legend in Parisienne circles is imminent now. Her tragedy is Dreyer’s Passion of Joan of Arc, her earnestness is Bresson’s Diary of a Country Priest, her rebellion is Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin, her self-discovery is Kurosawa’s Ikiru, and her identity is Zolka’s Die Forst Farht. At Vingt Quatre, we wonder how it escaped the attention of esteemed film historians that while Griffith’s close-up was only a caress, Zolka’s close-up was devastation.

II:

Excerpt from the British magazine ‘Penthesilia’

Aug 1967, Vol 23 Issue 8

From the article ‘The Defeat of The Vertical in The Forest Adventure’ by known feminist, Laconian, and psychoanalyst Barbara Moravia.

It is only during one of my recent visits to Paris, a city that I am prone to finding mundane, and being completely at loss to comprehend everyone else’s fascination for; that I finally made a discovery so enchanting and exhilarating that it more than compensates for the lack of any serious ingenuity that city has had to offer during my earlier visits. I finally took some time from being bombarded by the persuasive infant Jean-Luc and being treated to romanticised visions of a faux pas reality by that charmer Francois; and went to La Ville Du Cinema to catch the screening of a film I have read a lot about in the recent past but have not personally had a chance to encounter personally. I am glad the old is there to compensate for the brashness for all the new waves that rise around the world. I am glad Roger Tacchella and Vincent De Mille found a copy of The Forest Adventure.

It is a 1924 masterpiece by German director Peter M.Zolka, other works in whose filmography are a matter of great curiosity by now I can safely assume. As I skimmed through the French journal entries about the film (particularly Vingt Quatre), I was not at all startled to read how the French had merely soaked the film in dollops of their conniving romance and even gone so far so as to disguise their incomprehensibility at being faced with a masterpiece of such overwhelming stature with their fantastical analogies and ridiculous comparisons. For instance, this excerpt from one of Vingt Quatre’s write-ups about the film, “…Her tragedy is Dreyer’s Passion of Joan of Arc, her earnestness is Bresson’s Diary of a Country Priest, her rebellion is Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin, her self-discovery is Kurosawa’s Ikiru, and her identity is Zolka’s Die Forst Farht.”

Sure, Mr.Louis L’Amour, but do we even realise what Zolka was trying to achieve except evoking comparisons with films that hadn’t even been made then? Do we also realise that cinema is about human relations and not spatial ones?

The Forest Adventure is the masterpiece that it is because it is a brilliantly subversive manifestation of the popular notion of the conventional female role in cinema  – for Delga is not prone to holding onto bed-posts like Lillian Gish is in Griffith’s films, or Paulette Goddard is in Chaplin’s, but also because she not only just holds onto the phallic symbols (the trees, the tree-stumps, her own spear), and does not exist in a position wherein she relies on them; but has a naughty tendency to literally, as well as figuratively, use them to propel herself forward – and leave them behind; the way she hangs from one vertical symbol to another. Zolka’s photography only seeks to confirm this – he never shoots directly up at Delga (or into the sun), thus never framing her in a low-angle shot; instead always allowing her to start a shot below the position of the camera(in a high-angle or overhead shot), and then swinging to a position above it; thus not only escaping the confines of the frame, but also leaving it behind. Is it an irony then that the film had an all-male crew?

If Paris is special thus, it is not because they can claim the exclusive ownership of the Eiffel, or the Arc De Triomphe, or of Jean-Luc Godard; but of the singular copy of Die Forst Fraht. What is the world waiting for?

………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

And creation it was. It has become famous now how the greatest movement in the history of cinema met in the front row of the Cinematheque. The Cinematheque became a center of discovery, union, and irreverent ambition. The steady stream of American films that the young turks watched at Cinematheque, provided them with reference points, in the films of Howard Hawks, Nicholas Ray, John Ford, Alfred Hitchcock, Preston Surges, Rock Hudson and George Tashlin, that they consistently compared their own cinema to, resulting in a dissastisfaction that led them to take up cudgels against their own cinema and demand one that replaced the factory with the individual, and manipulation with sincerity. In the Cinematheque, lay the birth of Cahiers.

And yet, the Cinematheque was not merely a center of revolution; for it was not borne out of a need for propaganda, but transmission. It did not seek to convert, but cajole. The rage at a cinema in bad condition was the result of unconditional love for the American, and in that, the Cinematheque was not the propagator of hate; but the perpetrator of love. It provoked an outcry, but the outcry was not the scream of a suppressed rebel, but the joyous shriek of a child at the rediscovery of a toy he’d thought was lost. Langlois’s stand as a cinephile was vindicated, for his proposition of growth through sharing resulted in a generation by a number of Henri Langloises; the children of the cinematheque, l’enfants du cinematheque; youngsters in hopeless love with Marilyn Monroe and Lillian Gish. His stand was vindicated for Cinematheque became not the center of merely ‘showing’ a film, but sharing it, thus making cinema itself its own distributor.

“…Not exist Henri Langlois, exists only Cinematheque…”

Henri Langlois

Love bred arrogance, however. For Langlois, like any lover, invited no interference between him and the object of his love. And yet, there was Andre Malraux, who proceeded to remove Langlois from his position as the director of the Cinematheque, largely because of his preference for individualism when trying to run the show. History reveals to us that the state cannot tolerate the emergence of the artist, and that he is mostly like a mad dog, who, when left uninhibited, challenges authority first, and that holder of authority second. The state feels threatened and vulnerable to a mind that possesses the ability to convince a large audience. In that circumstance, it usually responds with an execution so rash and unthoughtful, that it causes people to take up subversion in a manner which the artist can only hope for, in the process becoming the consummation of its own insecurity. Malraux made the same mistake.

His move to remove Langlois was met with wide spread student protests and rioting in May 68. The event prompted a society already on the verge of disillusionment with the status quo to explode. The Festival at Cannes was stalled, and cultural icons like Claude Chabrol, Francois Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard joined the protest to reinstate Langlois to his position.

Remarkably, Langlois remained quite throughout the proceedings, perhaps embarassed by the realisation, that his reputation remained capable of overwhelming that of the Cinematheque itself.

The protestors won when Langlois was reinstated, although with reduced state funding. Politics had its imminent communion with art, finally.

……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

4. The political climate had changed in the ensuing two decades after the World War, and the atmosphere of conflict had given way to an atmosphere of reconciliation. Zolka’s esteemed film had become a source of power, and each country that could, did claim its ownership of the artifact.

I:

Following is the letter of from the German Cultural Commune in Berlin to the French Cultural Ministry, emphasising on the importance of the transfer of Zolka’s film as a way in which to strengthen diplomatic ties.

To

23^rd January, 1967

Monsieur Andre Malraux,                                                                                                                 French Cultural Minister

It remains within the scope of our duties to inform you of the success of the establishment of the identity of filmmaker Peter M. Zolka. Through detailed processes of investigation and inquiry, elaboration on which remains outside the scope of this letter, we have managed to confirm his identity as a German citizen during the era of the Third Reich. Details of his death have not yet been fully established. However, one may dare to attribute the cause of his death to natural causes, by the way of a coronary problem.

As per the agreement between our respective diplomats during the London Convention, it was decided that the French Cinema Archive La Ville Du Cinema, which comes under the direct control of the French cultural ministry and is in fact, state subsidized majorly, will help the concerned German authorities acquire a copy of Herr Zolka’s film Die Forst Fahrt. It goes without saying that a film of its stature holds relevance that transcends the meager impositions of national boundaries and is meant for ownership by the entire world.

We wish to assure you that this move will help both the nations bury memories of a dark past, and also help in strengthening both cultural and diplomatic ties in the times to come; permitting thus, in its wake, a freer cultural and social exchange between the two great nations.

Upon the receiving from our side of the confirmation of the transfer from your side, we will make the necessary arrangements to ensure safe transport of the duplicate film stock, and also wish to express the desire to pay for the duplication process.

Waiting eagerly,

Ryan Freidmann

Cultural Commune, Berlin

II:

Following is a Berlin Film Festival Report, filed in British Film Magazine, “Spool”, on July 14^th 1968

BERLIN: Even as the recent memory in the world of cinema remains tainted by the violent clash between the interests of the politician and the interests of the artist, the Berlin Film Festival, which happened just in the wake of Cannes, has not only managed to emerge from the older cousin’s shadow, but also managed to claim complete independence from it. The festival jury, which comprised of eminent film personalities like Luis García Berlanga, Peter Schamoni and Georges de Beauregard, arrived at the final consensus to award Swedish film ‘Ole dole doff’ by Mr.Jan Troell, the honor of being the best film at the festival. Among the various films in competition with this eventual winner were films by French master Jean-Luc Godard (Week End), Jean-Marie Straub (Chronik der Ana Magdalena Bach), American great Orson Welles (The Immortal Story), and Polish auteur Andrzej Wajda (Gates To Paradise). However, the longest standing ovation, ironically, at a time when the entire cinematic world fights for the restoration of a legendary film lover to his position; was reserved for a film whose very existence has been made possible only due to similar film love, and the accordance of the value of some sort of treasure to that film by the owners of that love. The film being The Forest Adventure by German master Peter M. Zolka.

…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

Henri Langlois was called ‘The Phantom of the Cinematheque’ by the title of a 2003 documentary of which he was the eponymous subject. To say that it might be the most accurate description of the man’s contribution to cinema would be an understatement, for the entitlement not only allows him to successfully secede into the shadows of the Cinematheque, thus allowing the institution itself to exist as an entity, as he so wished; but also in being able to describe the man as someone whose very name might not be used in the annals of cinematic history to refer to a specific person who existed, but to a notion, a vague idea, an essence, a spirit, and a symbol of all things cinephile. He is the Phantom for the idea of his existence transcends the limitations of a physical existence, and enters into another other-worldly realm, where he is but an epitomisation of cinephilia. The title is so important, as well, because it seeks to finally separate the man from the institution. Yes, as the Phantom of the Cinematheque, his spirit lives on in the projection room of the great cinema theatre; but as was his idea, eventually, we are meant to identify the Cinematheque as an institution greater than any individual.

A strong case might indeed be made for Langlois’ position as the most important figure in the history of cinema’s tradition; simply because, he created that tradition himself. And even as the man would himself disallow any attempt to let him supercede the medium itself; it remains beyond debate that cinema is essentially the result of the work of individuals. Like the other great artforms, especially music and painting, it cannot boast of an intrinsic existence within nature; and like literature, needs (and has needed) human beings to both invent it, and then constantly reinvent it. Where would cinema be, after all, without Maybridge, Dickieson, Lumiere, Melies, Griffith and Godard? Where would, however, all of them be without Langlois?

Yes, in its innate nature, the recorded image of cinema is permanent; but it still needs Henri Langlois to lend it its permanence. And that is precisely where Langlois’s role lies, as a creator of cinema. And I daresay, of the early 20^th century history?

“Griffith invented cinema. Welles nourished it. Godard killed it.”

Peter Greenaway

Langlois created it. For without him, where would Griffith, Welles or Godard be? Film needs tending, or it falls victim to its own tendency of falling into oblivion. It needs a rescue.

…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

5. Around early 1970s, Zolka’s film had begun receiving renewed serious critical interest. It culminates in, and is epitomised in this foreword of the seminal classic of cinematic literature, “Cinema, The Primal” by renowned Boston-based film critic Robert McKenzie.

‘Cinema is a paradox’.

‘Great cinema does not come from the head. It comes from hands and thighs.’

In order to even begin to fathom the scale of the epic that James Joyce’s Finnegan’s Wake is, a reader would first have to verse himself with the basic tenets upon which literature seeks to base itself upon. In order to comprehend, similarly, how ingenuous is Pablo Picasso’s introduction of multiple perspective in a two dimensional frame, a viewer would have to learn about the limitations that the canvas was supposed to be a representation of in painting, before Picasso came along. Similarly, unless one seeks to enhance his awareness to a level where the acknowledgement of Mozart’s genius becomes possible, Mozart is but another name; or a character in an Oscar-winning film, that means no more to the casual listener than details of the solar system do to Sherlock Holmes. To be a connoisseur to the works of, or even be a casual audience to the genius of the aforementioned greats, one would have to educate himself; and I daresay, the true genius presented within these works only seeks to address the educated, informed, erudite, adroit and aware realm of the human conscious – most certainly not its primal and primordial one. It is only cinema, thus, which as a medium, holds within itself the capability of possessing examples which are also simultaneously deemed its supreme achievements, that tap into the most basic of human reciprocation capabilities to elicit its responses, instead of relying on an accentuated level of awareness.

It is only cinema, thus, that can claim a Seven Samurai, which does not demand a superior level of education to be appreciated, and yet, remains one of the most fascinating examples of accomplished filmmaking. It is only cinema, wherein Martin Scorsese can gain access to the most fundamental of human responses – that of fear – just by adding guttural animal sounds to the soundtrack overlaid on his boxing sequences. For masters of the cinematic medium understand and acknowledge the fact that cinema is a medium that was originally conceived as one meant to be savored in a communal unison – and not in the private spaces of our homes as seems to the emerging trend these days. Through the virtue of its existence as a medium that sought to unite people and not segregate them into niches and schools like other media (or art forms do), cinema sought to address only that what was shared by each member in the theatre – his/her humanity, and the consequent results of that possession. Essentially, cinema is the only medium that the pre-historic man would not have been confounded by, because even he was in possession of the most stripped down form of humanity – one that the films of Werner Herzog firmly challenge, Jean-Luc Godard’s consistently frustrate, and Sergio Leone’s excite. And each great filmmaker seeks to address only a portion of the entire gamut of human emotion – not all of it, for that would be too much of a vulgar display of power. De Sica accesses human empathy like no one else does, Fellini raids nostalgia and Guru Dutt forays into cynicism.

In this book, through which I seek to celebrate these masters of primitive, you will find extended essays on the films of Werner Herzog, Ritwik Ghatak, Kenneth Anger, Alfred Hitchcock and Yasujiro Ozu. You will also find a long dissection on what makes The Forest Adventure by Peter M. Zolka, the most singular cinematic experience of all time.

-          Robert McKenzie, 1982

……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

Even then, the greatest tribute to Langlois as a cinephile would be that he opted against making the film watching experience he provided the denizens of the cinematheque didactic. For him, the effort remained not about the expression of a personal preference, a personal choice, of selection; or of picking one film over another. He was clear that the creation of Cinematheque was not an exercise in judgement, but merely of consumption. One loves a woman in whole; and not just her feet, or her hands. To Henri Langlois, cinema was the only love of his life – and the Cinematheque his love letter to it. As a conclusion, Cinematheque is not cinephilia’s cradle. Cinematheque is cinephilia.

“I have never said this movie is good, this movie is bad; they discover by themselves. I have not helped, I have not talked. I have put food on the table and they have taken the food and eaten, and then gone on to eat more and more food. All I give them is food, food, food, food. This is my work, to show films; to save and to show films, nothing more. Henri Langlois does not exist; only exists the Cinémathèque Française….Not exist Henri Langlois, only exists the Cinémathèque Française.” –

Henri Langlois

INT. WAREHOUSE – NIGHT

As Delga walks adjacent to the row of  huge cartons of matchsticks, we can only see her from a distance. She is determined, yet hesitant. She is purposeful, yet apprehensive. From a distance, in the LS, she looks like a picture of poise – the model for vendetta. But as we cut to a CU of her face, we discover for the first time that she’s been crying all this while. The discovery that the matchsticks used to burn her home were manufactured in Alexo’s factory has confused her  Tears stream down her face like torrents. We cut back and forth between  being very close to her and being observant from a distance. From being a witness to being the perpetrator.

As she reaches one end of the row of cartons, she suddenly back and looks at the audience. We slowly DOLLY IN, as she blurts out a voiceover,

DELGA(v.o):

He asked me whether love is bitter. I replied, “No, love is sweet.” When I kill him tonight, he will look into my eyes, writhing in uncontrollable pain and say, “But you said love’s sweet.” I will say, “Yes. It is bitter sweet.”

As we reach the end of the DOLLY, we can see her face from up close. She is not crying anymore. She has a smirk on her face instead. That’s when we realise, she is not called Delga anymore. She IS Delga.

She throws up a long piece of cloth which entangles itself with a beam in the ceiling. Suddenly, she leaps out of the frame through its edge, much like how Delga does in The Forest Adventure. We cover her swinging from one carton to another in LATERAL TRACKING from a distance, and as she reaches the last carton, she lands…

CU: On her feet. As we TILT up to her, she smirks again, and like Delga from TFA screams a gibberish wolf-howl.

As she exits the frame and begins walking out of the frame, we PAN to reveal how she a fire has started burning all the cartons down. While swinging from one to another, Delga’s set them on fire.

She has the last laugh.  We hear laughing loudly in the offscreen as the cartons, and Alexo’s factory burns.

FADE TO:

BLACK.

CREDITS ROLL.

THE END.

Excerpt from the screenplay of  2003 Golden Palm winning film Tagalog by Filipino director Kento Tioseco

Tags: Cinematheque, French cinema, Henri Langlois, November Issue no-7 2009, The Legend of Herr Zolka

Posted By Anuj | Wednesday, November 25th, 2009 | Filed under Auteur, News, World Cinema