THE FILMS OF JACKIE RAYNAL
Filmmaker JACKIE RAYNAL
Jackie Raynal is perhaps best known as the former programmer of two of New York’s premiere art cinemas – the Carnegie Hall and the Bleecker Street – who began her career in the 1960s as the film editor for New Wave directors such as Eric Rohmer, Jean-Daniel Pollet and Jean Eustache. Challenged by Zanzibar patroness Sylvina Boissonnas to stop editing other people’s films and make her own, Raynal traveled to Barcelona, where she completed DEUX FOIS (1969) in a single week. One of the most enigmatic of the Zanzibar films, it is composed of a series of unconnected episodes, some repeated twice. 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.”
GME distributes DSL & DVD editions of the following Jackie Raynal films:
ACÉPHALE
Patrick Deval (France, Edited by Jackie Raynal)
An ascetic prince wanders aimlessly, lectures at a university, wanders again, meets other underfed individuals, plunges into the maze of the city, wanders again, discovers virgin forest and builds a community, feels trapped, returns by himself, wanders in desperation, arrives at a crossroads at night-time, insults a woman passing by and apologizes immediately.
DÉTRUISEZ-VOUS
Serge Bard (France, Edited by Jackie Raynal)
The phrase ‘Aidez-nous, detruisez-vous’ (‘Help us, destroy yourselves’) was a rabble-rousing graffito that marked the walls of University of Paris’s Nanterre campus in May 1968. It was in this place and at this volatile time in world politics that a generation of French artists and thinkers defined themselves around youth and workers’ movements (recently chronicled in such films as Bernardo Bertolucci’s THE DREAMERS and Philippe Garrel’s REGULAR LOVERS).
DEUX FOIS
Jackie Raynal (France)
Jackie Raynal is perhaps best known as the former programmer of two of New York’s premiere art cinemas – the Carnegie Hall and the Bleecker Street – who began her career in the 1960s as the film editor for New Wave directors such as Eric Rohmer, Jean-Daniel Pollet and Jean Eustache. Challenged by Zanzibar patroness Sylvina Boissonnas to stop editing other people’s films and make her own, Raynal traveled to Barcelona, where she completed DEUX FOIS (1969) in a single week.
HOTEL NEW YORK
Jackie Raynal (US)
“Raynal shows a New York... that usually never gets on the screen, and the storytelling is so swift, so pared down, and economical that Raynal can pack more into one hour than many filmmakers can into two.”
-Filmex, LA Weekly
ICI ET MAINTENANT
Serge Bard (France; DVD Includes the short film ZANZIBAR, directed by Jackie Raynal)
Shot primarily in long takes on the Pointe du Raz in Brittany, ICI ET MAINTENANT (HERE AND NOW), according to fellow filmmaker Patrick Deval, “consists of the dreams of the solitary rambler, post-revolution... The moralist has given up on chaos; he takes his own pulse; he listens to the world, perhaps vibrating with it; he is in sympathetic ecstasy.
Also included on the DVD, Jackie Raynal’s ZANZIBAR (2005), is a documentary about the Zanzibar artistic movement captured in the films made in and around the student protests of May 1968.