This film was born from an invitation by the CNAP and the association Lieux Fictifs to make a film at Les Baumettes prison in Marseille. What challenges and surprises did filming in a prison, with people deprived of their liberty, present for you?
The first challenge was that it’s an enclosed place. It’s a confined space, more than that, really, because it’s confinement within confinement. It was a dark studio. For me, that was the primary difficulty. As for the human aspect… I had no apprehensions, no preconceptions, no fear. I was entering a place I didn’t know, and I thought, on the contrary, that it’s a good thing to go towards others in places you’re unfamiliar with. So my concerns were more cinematic than anything else. What can you do inside a black cube? How can cinema emerge from a black cube? That was really my first concern.
Watching the film, one gets the impression that this black cube is transformed as well: through the devices you employ, it becomes a space for thought, but also for reinventing reality, a process in which everyone present takes part, the crew as well as the prisoners. I’d like to ask you about this collective and relational dimension in the transformation of that space, of that black cube, into a space of invention.
Within that black cube, we had to create a patch of light. I imagined a photography studio that would become that source of light in the darkness. That was the device. Added to that were two references: To Sang Photo Studio by Johan van der Keuken and Camera Lucida by Roland Barthes. So I had those two references, along with the idea of this patch of light inside the space. I thought: starting from this point of light, we’ll try to bring stories to life. We’ll try to bring forth narratives that they invent, that we write together. We spent five days writing, using that setup and beginning with Van der Keuken’s film, which I showed them.
Roland Barthes entered the process later, towards the end, when I felt comfortable enough to take the reflection on images further. Our overall idea, beginning with that patch of light, was to question our relationship to images in all their forms: the missing image, the dreamt image, the fantasised image… To think about the image through this device and invite them to reflect upon it. There’s a line by Godard that I like very much and that also resonates with this place that states that cinema is forms that think.
So the idea was to create forms, bodies that think within that patch of light.
Several times in the film we see images shot through an analog camera. Where did that visual idea come from? What did looking through the lens of a film camera allow you to do?
What you see is the ground glass of a 6.6 camera, filmed from above. Since we were constantly researching, we had time to do so, I spent 21 days inside the prison. During those 21 days, the mornings were devoted to writing and filming. In the afternoons, I screened films for them. And even watching films became part of the creative process and the writing. I showed films like Salaam Cinema, for example, by Makhmalbaf.
To return to the idea of the ground glass, it ties back to Roland Barthes. I realised I couldn’t simply insert that book directly into the film, directly into the images. It had to pass through a filter, through something that would, in a way, soften the force of what was being expressed and make it more accessible. The frame within the frame creates a more playful space, one better suited to engaging with the book, to taking it apart, analysing it, playing with it. I needed a filter, and that filter was the perspective offered by the ground glass.
Could you tell us in greater depth how you approached this collaborative writing process? What was the relationship between writing and filming, and how did they influence one another?
We spent five days writing, starting from the premise: we’re in a photography studio, we’ve just acquired a photo studio, what can we do inside it? What kinds of scenes can we write? All of that came out of discussions with them and writing together. They also had this remarkable ability to focus, to withdraw to the side as they are in a confined environment. They have no difficulty isolating themselves in order to write. It’s quite fascinating. They would come back saying, “I’ve thought of this”, or “I’ve written a rap verse”, “I’ve written a poem”, “I’ve written something”. I was pleasantly surprised by their ability to write. Then, once filming began, of course everything changed. But at the same time, whenever we felt that an idea, a sentence, or a thought was leading us somewhere new, we allowed ourselves to change what we had written or even improvise something that hadn’t been planned at all, like the Western, for example. Sometimes they’d arrive in the morning saying, “Yesterday I watched a TV show called Malcolm, and there’s this scene where the whole family goes to have their photograph taken and I’d love for us to recreate that”. And that led to the sequence where they themselves have their portraits taken. So it was a writing process that unfolded in several stages. First, days specifically devoted to writing, and then an ongoing process of writing nourished by what we were watching. Salaam Cinema, for instance, also sparked ideas for them. It was a continuous dialogue between writing and filming, each constantly feeding the other.
Interviewed by Margot Mecca
