Master of Archive (inapat14)

Diego Maradona is a British documentary biopic directed by Asif Kapadia released in 2019. Composed of archival documents and interviews, it traces the life of the famous Argentine footballer. The film is screened out of competition as part of the official selection of the Cannes Film Festival 2019.

Diego Maradona looks back on the Neapolitan years of the Argentinian icon, where between 1984 and 1991 she went from being a demigod to a plague.

On 5 July 1984, Diego Maradona joined the Naples team for a new world record. For seven years, he made sparks in the field. The most mythical footballer on the planet is like a fish in the water in a city plagued by corruption...

Diego Maradona was created from more than 500 hours of unpublished images from the footballer’s personal archives.

One of the major assets of the documentary is to make us live the history from within. And at human height. The first shots are exceptional, the spectator is embarked in the convoy that takes Maradona, at the speed of a police car, to the San Paolo stadium passing through the center of Naples. You breathe in the atmosphere, and you measure the tension of those moments.

This documentary is seen as the most exciting fictions that no writer would ever have dared to invent. We talk about it in a never-before-cluttered proliferation of football, of course, but also of the hidden war between Italy «from above» and that «from below», of mafia (whose dangerous connections with Maradona were exposed to the light), of star-system, of bling-bling, with characters all more crazy than each other (the president of the club, girls ready to damne themselves for a night with the god Maradona, his wife, like a rock, always standing despite the deceptions and public humiliations...).

All with incredible images impossible to imagine today, since footballers control their communication and what can be shown or not on social networks. This is where the cameras came into Maradona’s privacy. With his agreement, of course, but without his having any control over the content of the images and what they reflected from him. They tell as much about a time as the man, and explain that this film is not only for the circle of ball lovers. Once again, Kapadia does not make himself judge, prosecutor, or lawyer of the one he films. It goes beyond the simplifying clichés and reconciles Diego and Maradona, the little kid with dreams full the head of the slums of Buenos Aires and the star extraordinary and suicidal. To conclude I warmly recommend this documentary. Good viewing!

If you think that television can no longer surprise you by offering a program both exciting on the background and original in its graphic and narrative form, this amazing animation film, which reinvents the relationship to archival images, will make you change your mind.

Using only period engravings, but animated thanks to impressive effects, playing on the depth (birds fly, snow falls, shells explode or even the flames dance), the graphic designer Raphaël Meyssan, accompanied by the screenwriter Marc Herpoux, the editors of the animation studio Miyu and the composers Yan Volsy and Pierre Caillet, stage a formidable story of the history of the Paris Commune, so rarely exposed on television.

Author of an ambitious comic book entitled Les Damnés de la Commune, Raphaël Meyssan has worked for many years to collect thousands of documents of the time. These archives, which form the basis of his graphic novel, are taken from the newspapers and books published during the Commune, and are this time put at the service of the image.

To adapt 500 pages to the screen, you had to make choices. The good idea of the author is to have chosen Victorine Brocher as the red thread of his first feature film, one of the important characters of his comic book and whose Memoirs, Memories of a Living Dead, had upset him, he says. This mother of a family «with an exceptional destiny» will engage with enthusiasm in the Commune of Paris, will lose there her very young son then her husband, who died in battle. Victorine joined the battalion Les Enfants perdus, barely escaping the massacre, and went into exile in Switzerland, where she adopted orphans from the communal movement before returning to France after the 1880 amnesty.

The strength of this documentary is also due to the care given by the technical team to the sound effects and a quality soundtrack (trumpets, violins). Without forgetting a high-flying vocal casting: throughout the film with the voices of Yolande Moreau and Simon Abkarian From the imperial military rout in Sedan on September 1, 1870 to the return to France of the exiled communards in 1880, this remarkable animated film unfolds with strength and sensitivity this historic decade that saw France definitively switch into the Republic, and which, regrets the cartoonist-director, «is not learned at school. It was taken from us, erased from the national novel by the Third Republic, which was based on the massacre of the communards».

L’arte della gioia (The Art of Joy) was written between 1967 and 1976 by Goliarda Sapienza and was first partially published in Italy in 1998, two years after her death. For twenty years, all – Italian publishing houses refused, definitively, to edit this long novel. It was too subversive and transgressive. During the eighties, post Pasolini and his anti-conformism wasn't accepted by all, publishing houses in Italy weren’t ready to let a – book that opens with violence, rape, incest and pedophilia, to then let the victim blossom in sexual relations in the monastery which saved her with a nun. That would be a little too much for – Catholic morality. L’arte della gioia had to wait for a French translation in 2005 to be considered – a master-piece and translated in other languages. Thanks to Nathalie Castagné, translator, who fought to edit and publish it with Vivian Hamy.

This novel is about the entire life of Modesta, the main character, from her childhood to her old death. Modesta was born in Mussolini’s rural, feudal province, Catane in Sicily, in 1900. She was born in extreme poverty but described like a woman who resists her “destiny”, a destructive and burning woman, explosive, sensual, rebel and bisexual who is confronted with the Catholic church and Benedictine moral and power, – fascism, and – the landowner’s domination. Modesta is transgressive, and always ready to disobey.

The first part of the book is really about survival, surviving the violence of her family wallowing in poverty, and then survival in a Benedictine monastery, and the discover of – reading. Then we enter for the second and third part directly into – Italian – and Sicilian history. There were important Resistance chapters against the Fascist regime in Sicily during the inter-war period and the huge increase of Mussolini’s fascism. With her Modesta character and reflexions, Goliarda Sapienza describes the history of the social movement in Northern and Southern Italy and then how the Italian Communist Party (PCI) fought against Fascism.

I must confess, when I started watching the Eurovision several years ago, I said it was ironic, I thought it was a show to laugh at. Nonetheless I was still watching it, and year after year I was understanding this show better. To the point that every year I am looking forward to be in May. It’s not ironic anymore - and was it really ever?

It’s been 65 years since the fist edition of the Eurovision song contest, 65 years of music, danse, spectacular outfits and scenography. Around May, an average of 40 countries - including a few non European guest countries - meet and compete. Each country is represented by a singer or a band, who performs a song to a large live audience, a jury, and of course viewers from all over the world. It all started in 1956, this first edition took place in Switzerland where only 7 countries competed. It was very different then that what you can expect today: a very traditional aesthetic, simple variety songs, no danse and no band allowed.

One could say the true essence of Eurovision crystalized in the 70s, the TV was finally in color, and the colorful and eccentric aesthetic of the era really made sens in this show. It became a place of expression, a place where artists could allow a great diversity of performances styles. And this aspect became the soul of Eurovision. The bigger, the better. For a performance to be « Eurovision style » there must be some kind of kitschness, glitters or weird moves. Wether it is the costumes, the staging, the very appreciated pyrotechnics, or a giant dress used as a video mapping screen : Eurovision is first of all a show, in which finance and what some could call « good taste » are practically ignored. Some really famous singers have been involved in the competition, wether they where known at the time of not : Céline Dion (Switzerland), ABBA (Sweden), Mireille Mathieu (France), Bonnie Tyler (United-Kingdom) and more recently Hooverphonic (Belgium).

But finally, this show is a mix between all of those decades, from the sixties to the twenty-one century. It’s a time capsule, witnessing the evolution of television and technologies, but also the music evolution through time, and last but certainly not least : fashion. Eurovision do not testify of the trends, but it is such an incredible place to experiment and a place of freedom of expression. Tolerance is a big part of the Eurovision community, or as they liked to be called Eurofans state of mind.

If the Eurovision organisation do not have a political stand, it is nonetheless highly politicized. First, it is a vector of soft power because it delivers a representation of the countries to the others, and the winner receives the competition the next year. So it is also an investissement, and can impact the perception of some countries, especially the one we know the least. It can also be interesting to look into the non-participant countries over the years. Indeed, every year some a few countries withdraw from the contest, wether it is a choice or not. This year for instance, Armenia didn’t take part because of the conflicts with Azerbaïdjan, and Hungary because they judged the show « too gay ». We can also see the songs and artists chosen by the countries as a facade, as a branding, to revalue the country’s image around the world.

What if, to conclude, we see life in pink?

Last article and here is the cartoon I kept for the end. May be one of my favorites for many reasons: The Pink Panther.

The Pink Panther is the sly, lanky animated cat created by Friz Freleng, and I’m willing to bet that by just reading that name, a little music is already ringing in your head. And that’s what makes all the magic and the genius of it. So let’s let ourselves be guided by the music and unravel this whole story.

Let’s start from the beginning: the pink panther was not originally a panther at all, nor even a character created to be the hero of an animated series. What does that mean? Well, the first time the animal appeared on a screen was in 1963, at the credits of a comedy film by Blake Edwards, in which we follow the adventures of a clumsy detective in search of the world’s largest missing diamond: The Pink Panther! For the opening credits’ music of this film, the director Blake Edwards calls on his friend Henry Mancini (who has already written him a mythical ballad for Breakfast at Tiffany’s). For the drawing, he calls Friz Freleng and Hawley Pratt. Freleng already had a career at Disney and Warner. He notably participated a lot in the development of the Looney tunes. But in the 1960s, he saw the animation department of Warner close, and it’s in this state of technical unemployment that he was asked to the credits.

While the Pink Panther is thus a jewel in the film, for the credits, the idea is launched to make it come to life as the imaginary animal that its name evokes. The crazy animal is born. With a mysterious felinity, at the same time very graceful and facetious, he just plays with the spectator and the names in the credits.

Always animated to the measure to fit with the tenor saxophone of the musical theme. The mixture between the animal and the notes like velvet steps is perfect. The theme is both sweet and elegant, a kind of mix of jazz and pop as its author knows how to do so well. And it will not fail to become absolutely mythical.

In fact, the credits are so acclaimed that they triggers the creation of a short animation film devoted to the animal ! This short film will be Oscar-winning in 1965. 60 others directed by Hawley Pratt will follow and the so captivating Pink panther will get his animated series broadcast in the United States from September 6, 1969 on NBC. All the codes of the credits are simply reproduced. The recipe is found: a series without words, all in music, which develops the facetious character of the animal in adventures without links with each other. About 6 minutes each time, simple, effective, with a lot of gags that, often involving a small man who looks strangely like Inspector Jacques Clouseau from Blake’s films.

This first version of the series will be broadcast until 1978 in the USA. The first French broadcast started in 1974 on the ORTF. At the end, there will be 124 episodes.

Tree things are the key ingredients :

First, the mythical musical theme. Very simple but captivating. It strangely does not tire. It is such an integral part of the cartoon that it is sometimes the source of the episode. For example in episode 19 of season 1, in which the panther tries to learn the violin with necessarily, this theme as the only reference faced to the 5th Symphony of Beethoven.

Second, the character’s aura. The spring of the scenario is always the same: follow this imaginary creature in her adventures, but is always as pleasant because the animal is very charismatic. He has an undeniably human side that makes it timeless. He also maintains a somewhat pirate temperament. In most of his cartoons, he stumbles into a difficult situation and stoically endeavors to make the best of it. And at the same time the stories are funny because the characters are also often full of flaws, and especially very impatient (the problems always end up being solved very suddenly by cannon fire), and that’s what makes them irresistible (funny or endearing). The cartoon with its gags still hits today. Maybe because even if the spring is still the same, the stories are very varied (from parentality/home decoration/a revisit of Cinderella/the taking of narcotics…). And maybe because the visual still makes very good, and that absurd humor can be intergenerational.

Third and last element: the color. Of course the name of the panther announces the color. But the titles of each episode also do. Absolutely everything is pink. And if you analyze it a little, the work on the colors is quite stunning. It was already important in the credits of Blake Edwards films. It’s actually a permanent color explosion that goes back to the beginning. Let’s not forget that the person was created in the cinema, by a director who likes it when it’s colorful and at a time when the TV is still in black and white. The mass flattens and changes of color are very often at the heart of the cartoon. Actually, when I think of the pink panther, the episode 1 of the first season always comes to me : a very simple and perfectly effective episode where the panther fights to impose its « pink » throughout the house preventing the Little Man from putting blue.

There, color is the comic spring of the entire episode. But when we look at it more closely, color is always an integral part of the cartoon. For example, It very often allows the panther to disappear into the decor, to hide, to play or to escape from an unpleasant situation.

Finally, this element allows to perfectly define the animal: a character always between two worlds. Desirable, terrifying? Between the folds and the slits, he hides, reveals, disappears, returns, fascinates.

With the acquisition of the MGM by the giant Amazon (as told by Louis Vallet in his article later on this blog): all episodes of the Pink Panther will now be accessible online! Amazon definitely hands down a real treasure to enrich its catalog !

January 2019. Maureen Wingrove, aka Diglee, a French author and illustrator, published a story on Instagram to talk about a book she just finished. It was not the first time she did that, but this time, it went viral. She presented an ecofeminist novel, untitled Le Mur Invisible (Die Wand) written by an Austrian author, Marlen Haushofer, in 1963. It is a classic Austrian novel that had kind of fallen into oblivion. But in just a click, it became an Instagram star.

“It was three days of avid reading. During this time, I only thought of this book, lived through this book, in apnea, obsessed and consumed.” Diglee

In only a couple of days, people became passionate about this novel. And in two weeks, Diglee started to receive thousands of messages on Instagram. People told her that they bought it, wanted to buy it and had already even finished it, most of the time in just one night.

The result? Libraries followed the movement and started to order new copies. The phenomenon took on such a scale that the novel became quickly sold out. The publishing house, Actes Sud, decided to grant Marlen Haushofer with the fame she deserve and reprint it.

Before Diglee, the sales of Le mur invisible were quite stable with approximately two hundreds copies sold each month. After her Internet review, it was sold out. Today there is almost 500 Instagram publications under the hashtag #Lemurinvisible.

People write reviews, share their feelings about it and thank Diglee. Only yesterday some new reviews were published, proof that it was not a one shot thing. The novel really became a classic in France too and still has a success in bookstores. The comments are mostly always the same, resembling the first one emitted by Diglee “I think I have never read a book this fast”, “I can’t read anything else since I have finished Le mur invisible. It’s not that I don’t like the other books, it is that this one is still too much present in me.” It is always a heart stroke for the readers, which are mainly women.

Most of the time, digital stars tend to influence their community to buy a miraculous face cream or to order from a special restaurant. By just posting a picture of themselves eating somewhere or doing their beauty routine, they influence hundreds, sometimes thousands of people to do so. Diglee just wanted to talk about how overwhelmed she felt after reading this book. But her words were so strong that she became herself an influencer. Her community did the rest. As there were each day new people who published pictures of their brand new copy, of their incredible experience and of their passionate reviews, many more tend to do the same and offer, many years later, a beautiful tribute to Marlen Haushofer.

Everyone knows or has heard of The Supremes, The Templation, Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye or The Jacksons 5. But who knows the story of the music label that signed, recorded and produced them? You should watch the film Hitsville, the making of Motown; a documentary by Gabe and Benjamin Turner.

The film traces the history of Motown, a famous american music label. Motown was founded in 1959 by Berry Gordy, who set up his studio in Detroit, Michigan. The studio was called “Hitsville USA”, because they were produced hits. The documentary focuses on the period from the birth of Motown in Detroit in 1959 to its relocation to Los Angeles in the early 1970s. The film traces the unique system that Berry Gordy put in place that allowed Motown to become a successful record company.

The creation and initial success of Motown took place during a period of high racial tension in America and in the midst of the nascent civil rights movement. There’s no denying that Motown not only changed the face of pop music, it did so with African-American artists in the middle of the Civil Rights era. The Turner brothers' documentary features an incredible soundtrack, rich testimonials and a wealth of archival footage, all of which attest to the talent of the Motown Record musicians.

It's a testament to the genius of Berry Gordy, creator of Motown. These hits still sound good today. Gordy had an idea in mind: he wanted a street kid to go into Hitsville, go through a process, and come out a bright, successful star. The film and the archive show the evolution of the Supremes from gawky teenagers to hit-making divas. But, the film does not address the issue of alcohol or drugs, which is perhaps why it was the very first Gordy-approved documentary about Motown.

The film offers interesting narratives, which are enriched with rare musical performances and behind-the-scenes footage. These archives come from Gordon's personal library, as well as previously unreleased interviews with almost every living Motown artist.

But the use of archive in the film is special. All the archives are very beautiful, but far too staged. The photographs allow the directors to reconstruct conversations. The static images are animated, the black and white images are sometimes even colorized. The choice was made to dramatize the archives, to make them move, and to say things that they do not tell themselves. The testimonies and the archives would have been more than enough to captivate a music-loving or even curious audience without having to transform them. Some of the film's critics describe one scene as "Marvel style". It's clear that the filmmakers overdid it in the editorialization of the images.

Due to the lack of public aid, film heritage is struggling to find funding for the restoration of its masterpieces. That’s why they asked for the help of the luxury industry. Sponsorships with luxury brands have always existed, for example for the restoration of historic buildings, or as sponsors of film festivals. But the action of this investor in terms of preserving cinematographic heritage is recent. So, what is behind this patronage?

First of all, Gucci house was a pioneer in this financing. In 2020, they celebrated their 10 years of partnership with the Film Foundation: an organisation that participates in the safeguard of cinema treasures.

In 2019, several films produced by Youssef Chahine, an Egyptian filmmaker, were restored and projected thanks to sponsorship with luxury houses. This money helped to restore for example Papa Amine (1950), Heaven of Hell (1954), Black Waters (1956).

This cultural action was therefore enabled thanks to donations from the luxury shoemaker: Christian Louboutin. He also contributed financially to the organisation of the exhibition at the French Cinematheque dedicated to Youssed Chahine, who died in 2008. But what is the relationship between cinematographic works and luxury houses?

Source : https://www.cinematheque.fr/cycle/youssef-chahine-474.html

Christophe Mikhaïloff, communication director of the Cinematheque, explains in an interview for Le Monde: “Such as a building, the cinema needs to be maintained, films alter over time and must be restored regularly as we renovate facades”. Sometimes, cinematheques approach luxury houses. How are they selected? He explains that in his institution, they always try to find a link between the plot of the film and the history of the house or its founder.

At times, these relations between movies and luxury homes are not obvious at first sight. For example, in the case of Christian Louboutin, it was just his passion for Egypt that pushed him to collaborate with the film library to restore the work of Youssef Chahine. And sometimes, the link is a bit humoristic : one of the greatest noses in the world, perfumer Francis Kurkdjian funded the restoration of Cyrano de Bergerac (1990), one of the greatest noses in literature.

How much does it cost to restore a movie? On average, it costs between 80,000 and 100,000 euros. Therefore, it is cheaper for luxury homes compared to renovating a historic building. So why do they agree to invest? What do they earn in return? Restoring a film allows them to make a name in this area: their name appears in the title at the beginning or at the end of the film. In addition, when a luxury house has made the costumes for a film, its restoration helps perpetuate the brand’s identity. Moreover, this donation allows them to reduce taxation by 60 %.

Michèle Morgan in a Chanel coat : “Le Quai des Brumes” from Marcel Carmé (1938).

So, on one hand, this helps to safeguard audiovisual heritage and, for brands, it allows them to be part of the global culture and leave an impression in society. In 2017, only one luxury house financed in the long run restoration of old movies: the Jaeger-LeCoultre house. The cinematèque would like to establish long-term partnerships with luxury houses.

One of the artistic forms that uses archives is the found footage. It consists in finding audiovisual archives (whereas fiction or documentaries, home movies, publicities, propaganda…), select, cut and edit them in a brand new assemblage. The editing generates a new meaning.

In order to fully understand this artistic form, let’s have a look at three results: a famous found footage movie and its two declinations. A MOVIE, by Bruce Conner, is a twelve minutes found footage movie from 1958 using educational videos and several news footage. Conner reveals his vision of the American society in the 50’s where sex, war and violence are as obsessive as they are destructive. 63 years later, it is still very accurate. Very accurate to say the least and represented thanks to – among other things, two movies by the video artist Jean Proctor: A movie by Jen Proctor (2010) and A movie x 2 (2015).

The first one is a “loving remake” of the movie by Bruce Conner, as said by Jen Proctor herself. The artist also uses the found footage technic. But that’s not all there is. The length is the same, as well as the music and the editing. She recreates the movie and modernizes it by creating a gameplay of responses. The images she chooses to do this actualisation are vibrant and don’t leave the viewer indifferent. In fact, they are spectacular (accidents), violent (video games), colourful (the naked woman in thermic vision), full of memories (World Trade Center). The viewer has already seen them or their equivalents in his everyday life. While Conner shows us an American society fascinated by war, sex and violence, Proctor shifts the point of view to the 2000’s and proves that, in the end, nothing has really changed.

In 2015, she directed A Movie x 2 using split screen: on the left, we can see the original Conner’s movie, unedited. On the right, the 2010 Proctor’s version. In the first place, A MOVIE is an inspiration for Proctor. But using the split screen technique to join the vision of the 1958’s American society to her own vision from 2010, A MOVIE also became raw material. The viewer is doubly active: not only he has to think about what he sees, but also has to understand the evolution (or non-evolution) between these two eras. Wars haven’t been stopped, neither has striptease. The public taste for breathtaking falls, sex and spectacular drama is still relevant. But the 2010’s viewer wants more. Proctor knows it and everything is faster in her movie. Thus, the naked woman who takes-off her stocking in Conner’s movie opening became a succession of women in Proctor’s. Both movies merged like a unique mirror that showed us the reflection of our society, unchanged in the last fifty years.

Watching both movies at the same time has nothing to do with combining them both into the same screen. When we are watching A movie x2, we are not looking at two movies. We are looking at a one and only movie: the Proctor’s movie from 2015. A MOVIE by Conner, created by using archives images, became itself an archive used by Proctor.

Plume Bachur

A MOVIE, Bruce Conner, 1958: https://vimeo.com/96777553

A movie by Jen Proctor, Jen Proctor, 2010: https://vimeo.com/proctor

James Bond, Rocky, The Wizard of Oz ... More than 4,000 films will go into the Amazon Prime catalog after the $8.45 billion purchase of century-old Hollywood studio Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. The American e-commerce giant Amazon is arming itself against the streaming emperor Netflix.

Amazon's purchase of the studio is the second most expensive acquisition in the company's history. “MGM has a huge catalog with titles that the public loves. We are going to reinvent intellectual property in the 21st century, ”said Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon, last month. In addition to 4,000 films, including the saga of James Bond, Robocop, Basic Instinct, Raging Bull or Thelma & Louise, Amazon will obtain a vast catalog of series, such as The Pink Panther, Fargo and Vikings.

Established in April 1924 by theaters owner Marcus Loew, the MGM studio has grown into one of Hollywood's most important throughout history, with many stars including Greta Garbo, Joan Crawford, Clark Gable, Katherine Hepburn, or Elizabeth Taylor. In all, he won over 180 Oscars and over a hundred Emmy Awards! But it has also experienced many financial problems since the 1970s, before declaring bankruptcy in 2010, then restructuring. He has also suffered a lot from the Covid-19 pandemic and the long shutdown of movie theaters. Despite the weak stock market valuation of studio MGM, in difficulty, several giants of the digital industry, including Apple, were interested in its acquisition. But it was Amazon that won the lot and made history by becoming the first player in the video streaming industry to acquire a major Hollywood studio.

Amazon thus clearly displays its ambitions to dethrone Netflix. The Prime Video service already has nearly 200 million users, closely behind Netflix with its 208 million subscribers. The race for the top spot in the streaming market has never been closer. In the era of multiplatform consumption, the most effective way to stand out and seduce an audience in constant search of new products and a variety of choices is to expand and regularly renew its catalog. And with this takeover of MGM, Amazon Prime greatly strengthens the content of its catalog, while the video streaming industry is subject to ruthless competition. To gain subscribers, platforms must invest in content, such as Netflix which could spend $17 billion this year.

Amazon had also already launched expensive film acquisitions in recent years. He also engulfed in sports breach, with the purchase of exclusive rights to the NFL in the United States, as well as Wimbledon and the US Open in the UK. He acquired part of the rights to Roland Garros in France for this year and the two to come. The takeover of MGM comes against a backdrop of increased consolidation in the media and entertainment industry.

However, it should be noted that Amazon's ability to integrate the entire MGM catalog into its platform is uncertain today, because many programs are not only the property of the American studio. The MGM catalog from before 1986, for example, belongs to the pay channel TCM (Turner Classic Movies). But there is no doubt that the American giant will find a solution to this...

The Wizard of Oz (1939) - Trailer. One of my favorite movies, The Wizard of Oz, will be available on Amazon Prime since its purchase of MGM.

Released directly on Netflix because of the Covid-19, SpongeBob's third cinematic adventure entertains the younger ones, but this time leaves out adults fans of the original series and its scathing humor.

Head to Netflix, where The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge on the Run, whose theatrical release was torpedoed by the Covid-19, ended up anchoring. It’s the third film adaptation of the animated series created by Stephen Hillenburg in 1999. Tim Hill's feature film begins with the kidnapping of Gary the sea snail, ventures into the Wild West among zombie cowboys, then ends up at Poseidon’s house in an underwater version of Atlantic City. Crazy? Yes, it's SpongeBob.

If the movie was meant to be a nice tribute to Stephen Hillenburg and his creation, those who are used to the comedy gestures and situations of the series will probably be bored in front of this uninspired, even lazy film. Admittedly, the first half hour remains very faithful to the original work: Bob and Patrick are happy and loud fools, unlike the grumpy Carlo who hasn’t improved his clarinet level, while Sandy still has as much energy as Mr. Krabs when it comes to count the money, or Plankton to try to steal the secret recipe of crab pâté. It’s also pleasant to find the vocal distribution of the series, in addition to his recognizable sound design among a thousand.

But it would have been even more appreciable to take again these characteristics which make the SpongeBob success, while seeking a little to use more unexpected humorous springs. The movie looks like a flawed by-product of the series. The lack of creativity is also felt through the too great similarities with certain episodes of the series.

The series knew transcend the great anything in which she swam, offering crazy and quite enjoyable episodes for ten or twenty minutes. But when it comes to a feature film, it’s necessary to master its narration and not to get lost in too many adventures far removed from the main plot. The movie also drags a humor that systematically falls flat, for lack of having known how to renew it.

Thus, the movie can only count on the indulgence of a young audience to succeed. And it is desperately trying to phish adults with cinematic references, an old shool soundtrack (like Ricky Martin, a-ah, Celine Dion…) and appearances like Keanu Reeves.

As the movie strives to stay in the spirit of the series, to appeal to SpongeBob fans, it ultimately takes a much more disturbing and forced commercial turn by becoming a sort of large-format commercial for the spin-off Camp Coral. Scheduled for 2021 on Netflix and announced just months after the death of Stephen Hillenburg (who would have been totally opposed to the idea), this prequel will feature a 10-year-old Bob accompanied by his new friends on summer camp. Unfortunately, the spirit that was the charm of SpongeBob SquarePants is therefore likely to continue to decline gradually…

The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge on the Run (2020) - Official Trailer

Coming back to the beginning of the loop, onto matters whose stigmas keep them away from institutional archives (remember when I talked about porn archives ?) : let’s try to address the issue of LGBT+ and queer archives. Emphasis on the « try. » Needless to say, one’s approach on the subject might be naive. Obviously, institutional actors aren’t prone to take up the responsibility of archiving LGBT+ and queer history – we wouldn’t be living in a heteropatriarchal society otherwise. Nonetheless, the slow progressive turn of the past two decades and the pink-washing policy of Western states and industries could’ve hinted a change towards state-funded repositories. But rather than asking ourselves why the state won’t support LGBTQ+ archives, or whether it should at all or not, let’s focus on how the communities are actually ensuring the preservation of their own history.

If you’ve scrolled around Twitter for less than a minute, you know that the Internet can’t exactly be called a « safe space ». And yet, despite its load of hate speech, that’s where you’ll find various initiatives to gather and preserve LGBTQ+ heritage. The task is far from simple, but brings to light a wide typology of items, from party flyers to oral testimonies, including periodical and zines, photography collections as well as audiovisual documents. For example, activists and scholars such as the LGBTQ Oral History Digital Collaboratory (based in Toronto) are collecting interviews to document the 2000 police raid against a night event for queer women and trans folks at the Pussy Palace club, reaching out to the patrons of the club as well event organizers and journalists.

El Archivo de la Memoria Trans (AMT) is another virtual example of self-documentation and self-governance funded in 2012 by Argentinian transactivists Maria Belén Correa and Claudia Bía Baudracco in order to allow the trans community – scattered in exile and under constant systemic attack – to share testimonies, letters and pictures. It now hosts over 10.000 digitized documents, including all of the above, as well as personal diaries, audiovisual records and passports, from the beginning of the 20th century to the late 1990’s. Divided into « series » such as « Show », « Daily life », « Sex labor », « Birthday » or « Childhood », the collection aims to be a reference of collaborative preservation of collective memory. AMT also produces its own content, reusing materials from the funds deposited, in order to deliver a more in-depth depiction of trans lives in Argentina.

A lot of these projects have in common the personal approach of the process. Some initiatives even turned out to be online memorials on social networks, each post focusing on passing on the name, face and story of an individual. The AIDS Memorial Instagram account had dedicated a specific hashtag, at #whatisrememberedlives, in an attempt to bring back to life, if not the victims of HIV, their memory and the impact they’ve had on those who survived and/or are left after tat pandemic. However, one couldn’t stress enough that collective memory relying on a platform and technology as volatile as Instagram is just as endangered as the community it belongs. – Blaise

Here are some links to other queer online archives :

Queer Zine Archive Project

Rainbow History Project

The ArQuives

During the 12th century emerged the so-called Beguines in the Netherlands and spread all over western Europe. It’s usually called the first European women’s organization, by women who lived under monastery conditions but who were also very reactive in the societal life. They ran a variety of businesses and used the surplus for construction of schools for children, poorhouses and also to help other women in need. At one point they started to be persecuted by the Christian church but managed to survive and stayed active until the 20thcentury. Despite their highly interesting and fascinating history, we know relatively little about the Beguines – due to the lack of documentation of their existence in the archives.

The history of the forgotten Beguines as a starting point of this new book, that attempt to settle account for the chronic lack of women represented in History. “Arkivism, a manual” (in Swedish “Arkivism, en Handbok”) is published by Stockholm Museum of Women History this year. The book is composed in two parts. The first part can be used as a guidance for the one who wants to work with the already existing archives and who wants to search for the hidden women in those. The second part has a more future directed perspective and call for today’s women to assure that theirs’s and other women’s lifeworks are recorded and archived, for future proposes. Because if this isn’t achieved, highlights the co-authors Helene Larsson and Lina Thomsgårs, we risk an as tunnel visioned histography of tomorrow as it is today.

Still today the new material that enters archives, concern considerably more men than women. So, if the documents that are saved today are going to be the sources for future researchers, the life works of women, their experiences and the today’s fight for women rights are once again ventured to be forgotten and excluded from the history books.

“It is now time for women to archive their history, with their own voices”, writes the authors, that employ the word ‘archivism’, as in “activism”, to incite and encourage the continued feminist fight. As they say, it’s all about activism, that reaches out for the archives to find and to bring back to light historically hidden women, and to make sure that today’s women are brought to the archives.

We do have a modern Swedish case that illustrates this problem. The feminist movement created during the 70’s “Group 8”, had an immense influence on the Swedish society and equality politics. But when one of the main members, Gunilla Thorgren, wanted to write down their history, it turned out to be a challenge since nothing really had been saved. During the active years of Group 8, the members barely had time to write down anything to keep a trace of their work. “We focused so hard to make change in the present that we forgot to preserve the material that could explain how we fought for our rights”, says Gunnilla Thorgren.

As an example, for how we can find the forgotten and historical events in the existing archives, we learn about Katarina Pirak Sikku that had an immense success with the exhibition “Nammaláhpán” 2014, about the story of the Sámi people experiences through “leaking archives”. The main archive documents came from the Swedish State Institute For Racial Biology (1922 – 1958), that documented races and also the Sámi. Today we know that the way the Sámi was treated during the examinations was deeply and purely racist. Although the colonial perspective of the documents is a fact, Pirak Sikku managed to identify the leaking gaps and to extract the perspective and voices of the victims.

I’ve just mentioned a few examples from the book, and we discover so many other experiences of deep archive diving’s, like the award-winning Fatima Bremmer, the novelist Karolina Ramqvist, the author and documentary director Kristina Lindström, and Anna Götlind, the professor of history that’s specialized in “micro history”- that seeks to study an individual person or place to be able to comprehend a bigger historical course of events.

Nine films. That is all that could be saved from the 1,700 works of Indian silent cinema thanks to one man: Paramesh Krishnan Nair. Born on April 6, 1933, and recently passed away on March 4, 2016, he is known for the foundation of the National Film Archive of India (NFAI) in 1964. His role was fundamental in collecting and safeguarding the Indian film heritage. He practiced a collecting policy like his French counterpart Henri Langlois by refusing to select only films he liked or considered important enough. He was already aware that audiovisual archives were not meant to create a pantheon, but cultural history. However, more than just an archive or a film history, the NFAI was also an educational resource. It is part of the Film and Television Institute, an audiovisual school.

Its research and acquisitions were not limited to national productions. It also played a role in the preservation and distribution of international filmmakers in India. Like Langlois in France, Nair's work was recognized and celebrated. One of his admirers, and an archivist by profession, Shivendra Singh Dungarpur, dedicated a documentary to him: Celluloid Man. It was shown in 2012 at Il Cinema Ritrovato festival in Bologna before its national release in India in 2013, marking the centenary anniversary of Indian cinema. The 2.5-hour film traces Nair's work, alternating scenes with him, film extracts, and interviews with personalities from the Indian and international film industry exploring their relationship with Nair and the history of cinema. Dungarpur had to ask the NFAI 11 times before they let him shoot in their buildings.

Nowadays, the NFAI has one of the largest audiovisual collections in Asia with more than 10,000 films in its holdings. In 2003, a fire caused the loss of several hundred reels of film. Nair had already left the institution by then, but the disaster was a source of tension between the film community and the government. The fire was caused by nitrate films (mostly original negatives) that were stored in a room with poor air conditioning and fire suppression systems. In 2017, 14 years after the incident, they were still not repaired due to late funding. Shabana Azmi, a famous actress, who is interviewed in Dungarpur's documentary explains that she was in Parliament at the time of the fire and no one in the Government seemed to care.

Launched in 2018, Another Gaze is a feminist film journal published online and in print. This plurality of the magazine's modes of publication doesn’t mean that the content is redundant: the articles available on the site are rarely repeats of the paper edition. This approach is part of a global media movement. Medias must try to attract their audience where they are, with their feet on the ground and their heads in the “cloud”. In the restricted category of film magazines, this two-headed impulse seems to be mostly echoed by English-speaking magazines such as Film Comment or Little White Lies, French-speaking magazines having more difficulty embracing those new consumption modes.

However, Another Gaze has gone even further by launching in March 2021 its streaming platform, Another Screen. Contrary to the dominant streaming platforms, it’s an "irregular" streaming platform which doesn’t have any particular periodicity. The films presented often remain 1 to 3 weeks and are picked according to themes as vast and varied as "Eating / The Other", Cecilia Mangini, or "For a free Palestine: Films by Palestinian Women". The films presented are made by women of different origins and backgrounds forming a kaleidoscope of different practices, sensibilities, and perspectives.

The editorialization of the streaming platform is not limited to the richness and originality of its selections, however, since the films are systematically accompanied by texts ranging from historical and aesthetic presentations to transcripts of roundtables that enlighten or complement the films presented. It’s interesting to note that such editorial content is rarely present on the biggest streaming platforms such as Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, or Disney +.

This strategic gap is often discussed in the film industry as a barrier to the conflict that drives the big platforms to the rest of the audiovisual ecosystem. It seems to me, however, that it is a difference that is already extremely prevalent in the media in general: the more important or popular a medium is, the less likely it is to value rare works, whether it is streaming or reviews, the mass media are hermetic to otherness. However, we are the first ones to blame for this lack of otherness. The distribution policies of the most important platforms only replay those of the American majors. They lock the spectators into their tastes, leaving no room for them to change or evolve.

During the general lockdown of last spring, many people organized themselves to maintain a form of "cultural continuity". It was an answer to the loss of cultural places, to the reduction of the legal offer, to the need to continue academic research, and to reinvent exchange places when these were lacking. Thus, we can mention the birth of groups such as "La bibliothèque solidaire du confinement" dedicated to the research and the exchange of academic-only articles and texts, or "La loupe" dedicated to film exchanges. If such platforms are nothing new, they have however the particularity to be public, mediatized (in particular for La Loupe), and not very anonymous since they're integrated into social networks (contrary to peer-to-peer).

To avoid deletion and possible legal reprisals, different strategies have been adopted: reserving the sharing for private messages, making the group a simple platform for centralizing requests, or limiting sharing to works that aren't legally available in France. If these exchanges can be done with the consent of the rights holders, they can create tensions with some professionals who consider themselves indirectly robbed by the massification of free exchanges diverting part of their potential customers from their current or future offers. Indeed, if a film doesn't have rights holders or a legal offer available in France at the moment, who can say if it's not planned in the more or less long term by a distribution company? And why should we think in terms of national territory to define the rules of a group hosted on a globalized social network?

Beyond these economic and accessibility issues, there is also the question of film conservation. Since the origin of cinema, many film prints (sometimes unique!) have been illegally kept or copied by cinemas and film archives. Henri Langlois, the founder of the Cinémathèque Française, used to make copies of films that were lent to him before returning them, thus allowing him to enlarge his collections. The creation and multiplication of digital recordings and storage devices have multiplied piracy practices, while the Internet has extended the distribution of pirated copies. Each and everyone is now the potential guardian of cultural treasures stolen from the traditional distribution channels, becoming archivists of their discoveries and cultural journeys.

During the last few years, the well-known director Wong Kar-Wai has been restoring almost all his feature films from his crime thriller As Tears Go By (1988) to his sci-fi romance, 2046 (2004) in 4K resolution in a joint effort of Jet Tone Film (his production company), L’immagine Ritrovata, One Cool and the Criterion Collection. The restoration process has been the opportunity for Wong Kar-Wai not only to improve past copies but also to rework his movies aesthetic. Some of those changes are common to all of the Wong Kar-Wai restoration (such as the yellowish color grading), but others are more specific and thought specifically for a movie. The frame ratio of Fallen Angels (1995) is one of those, switching from 1.85:1 to an anamorphic Cinemascope. According to the director, these changes were already planned for the original theatrical release but couldn’t be applied due to technical limitations.

This use of restoration as a tool to remove previous technical constraints or to rethink the movie isn’t rare in the audiovisual field. The evolution of the original Star Wars movies is probably one of the most documented cases. Going from CGI overhauls to Dark Vador’s infamous “No!”, the modifications asked by George Lucas are proof enough that filmmaking is a never-ending process.

However, one must ask themselves if this creative use of restoration doesn’t negate one component of all arts: history. The case has already been made by movie buffs that restorations altering the technical specifications were both revisionist and degrading attempts doing more harm than good both in historical and aesthetic terms. More precisely, those arguments think of film history as more than a subject of discussion for film historians but as part of film aesthetic. According to these considerations, technical limitations are not problems meant to be lifted during future restorations, but a plain part of the film’s identity.

This view is vivid in found footage practices. Based on the collection and editing of old footage rarely restored, those films use history as the gravity center of their style. In the hands of their filmmakers, what could be seen as defaults in mainstream media have become resources. Film grains, dye fading, redox blemishes, and other usual problems usually corrected are put on the front line and sometimes even searched or created such as in a lot of fictional found footage movies, a popular trend in horror movies since the Blair Witch Project (1999).

It’s interesting to see in those fictional movies that these false degradations are used as proof of authenticity of the depicted events whereas we try to remove them in restoration in order to retrieve the film’s original state, forgetting in the process that a film or any material work of art (such as paintings or buildings) aren’t fixed and intangible forms but floating on the river of time.