Elisabeth Perceval Nicolas Klotz
L’Héroïque Lande (FID 2017) proved it in style: fire and escape are the prime
elements in Nicolas Klotz and Elizabeth Perceval’s work. Based on a short story
by Faulkner that poeticises the escape of a slave, from Brazzaville to São Paulo
by way of Barcelona, Nous disons revolution embraces present time in four
movements called “races”. Before being a message of hope for a sick world,
revolution is first of all about cinema. It happens in the editing room, where
Klotz and Perceval pull out all the stops: within and in between fragments of a
heterogeneous and stubborn material collected throughout the years, through
journeys and meetings, they insert a bunch of texts and music which, when
rubbed against images, light the fuse of rebellion. Klotz and Perceval remember
from Deleuze that it is also possible to run or to flee on the spot. It is called
dancing, becoming a flame: to each person their own revolution. Men and women
are dancing feverishly for a long time. The dance of bodies turns into a filmic
trance, fleeing turns into running away, with braided motifs that get revived with
every race. The men who don’t dance talk, recite, tell their own stories for and
with the filmmakers. And be it through dancing or talking, it is by sharing work
space and time, by making a film together, as a community, and by lovingly giving
in to sharing, that the film operates politically. It even makes a processional samba
in the streets of São Paulo look like a show of inalienable collective power. Carried
away by this power, the film itself then seems to run away, to overrun its own
limits. Somewhere between fable and document, improvisation and composition,
anger and joy, all frontiers are burning. (Cyril Neyrat)