L'Ambassade, 1973
Betacam numérique, PAL, couleur, son
L’Ambassade by
As though animated by a need to tell the story, a voice is placed over this gallery of men and women whose voices have not been recorded. At no time is there any direct sound. On screen, close-ups of tense faces, and hands, those of Florence Delay[1] and of Carole and Paul Roussopoulos.[2] Their eyes appear to be glazed over, immobilised by the void. The voice comments the images of a weeklong confinement, a life away from the outside world, which is however only a transitory moment in history.
L’Ambassade is an essay/film in which
Lou Svahn
[1] Florence Delay, a French writer, would later provide the voiceover for
[2] Carole Roussopoulos is a documentary film director. She is the first woman to have worked with a portable video camera. With her husband, Paul Roussopoulos, she founded the first militant video collective: Video Out. In 1982, she created the Centre Audiovisuel Simone de Beauvoir with Delphine Seyrig and Iona Wieder, with the aim of conserving and disseminating audiovisual documents relating to women’s struggles.
[3] André Bazin, Le cinéma français de la Libération à
[4] Jean-André Fieschi, “L’Ambassade”, Trafic, n°19, 1996.
[5] François Niney, “L’éloignement des voix répare en quelque sorte la trop grande proximité des plans” [The distancing of voices somehow compensates for the exagerrated proximity of the shots], Théorème numéro 6, Revue de l’Institut de Recherche sur le Cinéma et l’Audiovisuel – Université de Paris III), Recherches sur