Fidback 01 × Declan Clarke

Following a pilot issue published in 2024, FIDMarseille is launching issue 01 of its annual magazine, Fidback. Each issue paints a constellation-like picture of cinema over the past year. One image among a multitude of possibilities. A constellation, because it is up to the reader to create the image by drawing lines between the films and between the texts.

To celebrate this publication, FIDMarseille is organising a launch party in Paris on 7 November.

In the presence of the authors who contributed to this new issue, the evening will open with readings and discussions about the magazine. It will continue with a screening and a meeting with filmmaker Declan Clarke, to whom Alice Leroy (Cahiers du cinéma) devotes an exclusive portrait in this first issue. In ‘Finding a form that accommodates disorder’, the author offers an overview of the work of a major filmmaker in contemporary cinema who is still too little known.

FIDMarseille has been supporting the work of Declan Clarke for several years, whose Saturn and Beyond won the Georges de Beauregard International Prize in 2021, and If I Fall, Don’t Pick Me Up was awarded a Special Mention by the Jury of the International Competition in 2024. How I Became a Communist was presented in the Other Gems section of FID 2023.

Meeting, discussion and drinks with Alice Leroy (contributor to the magazine), Clara Schulmann (contributor to the magazine), Cyril Neyrat and Tsveta Dobreva (editors of the magazine) and in the presence of other authors from the magazine.

HOW I BECAME A COMMUNIST
Declan Clarke
Irland, Germany, 2023, 55’
FID 2023

A woman patiently cleans her chimney and tidies up her domestic space: this is a daily toil, endlessly reiterated, yet not alienated. Around her unfolds an Irish landscape, and a superimposed text unveils its still topical story, marked by England’s domination, that even Thatcher’s death will not erase. A voice-over refers to a tale by the Grimm brothers, The Bremen Town Musicians. And from this childhood memory is delineated an analysis of its libertarian subtext, as well as a history of its avatars in the context of the upheavals of 19th century Europe. These are so many threads and approaches that piece together, explicitly or surreptitiously, the itinerary of an awakening and of a political awareness.

(Nathan Letoré)