Two Zanzibar Films Distributed by GME Play at the Harvard Film Archive on February 3rd
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STILL: PHILIPPE GARREL’S LA CICATRICE INTERIEURE (1972). SOURCE: GARTENBERG MEDIA ENTERPRISES.
Jackie Raynal’s DEUX FOIS (1969) and Philippe Garrel’s LA CICATRICE INTÉRIEURE (1972) will play at the Harvard Film Archive on February 3rd. These films are showing in conjunction with the publication of The Afterimage Reader: a compendium of essays, assembled by The Visible Press, from the magazine Afterimage, which focused on independent and avant-garde cinema and was published irregularly between 1970 and 1987. GME distributes, to the North American university market, DEUX FOIS as both a DVD and a DSL file, and LA CICATRICE INTÉRIEURE as both a DVD/Blu-Ray combo pack and a DSL file. Bonus features on the DEUX FOIS release include Raynal’s short film AUTOUR DE JACQUES BARATIER from 2002.
During the volatile late ‘60s in Paris, the filmmaking collective known as Zanzibar began creating underground movies. The group consisted of artists like Garrel and Raynal, and resembled a clique of Warhol Factoryesque characters: artists, writers, actors, and models, a few of whom had actually worked at the Factory. Though all were cinephiles, jointly they had only modest movie-making experience. Yet the Zanzibar films, like DEUX FOIS and LA CICATRICE INTÉRIEURE, with their refreshing lack of regard for tradition, are infused with the countercultural energy and restlessness of the times.
As noted on the Harvard Film Archive’s website: “Afterimage was founded on the principle… of an ongoing commitment to avant-garde cinema, to radical cinema, to ‘new’ cinema understood both aesthetically and politically” — like the Zanzibar films.
Raynal’s DEUX FOIS is composed of a series of disconnected episodes, some repeated. The fairy-tale phrase “once upon a time” is turned on its head, as is the logic of classical film construction. With herself as the film’s “star,” Raynal announces each of the film’s sequences and proclaims, theatrically and ironically, “tonight will be the end of meaning.” The film has been described by filmmaker and film theorist Noël Burch as “an intentionally elementary meditation on certain primary functions of film, that could be said to be at the roots of film editing as such — expectations, exploring the picture, perceptual memory, relationships between on-screen and off-screen space — all explored in a series of free-standing sequence shots of perfect simplicity."
Meanwhile, Garrel’s LA CICATRICE INTERIEURE depicts “Nico [singing] and scream[ing] in the desert of New Mexico, the snowy plains of Iceland, and the calcified landscapes of Egypt.” Garrel is credited with making “the ultimate film-trip” with this work, which he described as “a record of what was going through my head at the time of the shoot… you just have to enjoy watching it, in the same way as you'd enjoy taking a walk in the desert.”
To acquire GME titles, such as the Zanzibar films, for institutional use, please visit our ordering info page.