La Bataille des 3 P, 1976
PAL, sound, colour
Le Lion, sa cage et ses ailes
Films by Armand Gatti made in the Montbéliard region with immigrant workers.
Images and editing: Hélène Chatelain, Stéphane Gatti.
In early 1975, Montbéliard's Centre for Cultural Activities invited Armand Gatti to create a work in direct collaboration with the people of the town. The Centre provided video equipment and a subsidy from the Cultural Intervention Fund. Armand Gatti observed Montbéliard, the second-largest working class concentration in France, dominated by Peugeot. The town is home to some 10,000 immigrants, out of a total population of 35,000. He found that Montbéliard was a "schizophrenic town", inhabited by people with different backgrounds and languages. A town like the Tower of Babel. The initial hypothesis: "a film about you" – or the story of a town recounted by its inhabitants – became a history of inhabitants with a common denominator of exile. A film made in close collaboration with immigrant workers. In the context of Montbéliard's nebulous form with many nationalities, Armand Gatti suggested that each community should write its own scenario and give its own view of Montbéliard. Accompanied by Hélène Chatelain and Stéphane Gatti, he proposed to turn the words into images. Video provided the material that was adequate for the requirements. Armand Gatti: "[…] It is neither cinema nor television, but it is the possibility of brining into existence a language that we couldn't have had with television. And it couldn't exist in the cinema either, because it has no working class vocation, it tends to elitism: you send off your films to the laboratory and the people don't see a thing, whereas here, they have an immediate view of what they are doing."1 In the January 30th 1977 edition of Le Monde, Catherine Humblot wrote: "Le lion, sa cage et ses ailes is not only an exemplary form of activity, it's also a new way of writing, a Godard-like style of talking round and about communication …" The immigrants chose to speak out. They filmed inside the factory but also in the streets where they lived. A kind of immigration that takes on its own personality and finds its own identity. Armand Gatti doesn't work with groups; he follows the individual. The film escapes from the dominant ideology of the 1970's. It doesn't try to unite the working class and dissociates itself from the myth of homogenisation; on the contrary, it shows that everything that has been said about the class struggle doesn't necessarily correspond to the experiences that immigrants have lived through. Hélène Chatelain: " […] it caught on about immigration. Because we didn't have a political standpoint, nor a strategic approach, but a variable approach that gave a completely existential point of view. Suddenly, the desire to speak out, the desire for an identity took a strong hold. "2 Le lion, sa cage et ses ailes takes on the form of an epic of everyday life with the appearance of faces that come into view, with first names and surnames. Individuals who carry the traces of the past (marked by history, by war…). Altogether, the full video includes six films, which are interwoven and superimposed, a prologue and an epilogue. Armand Gatti's team followed the progress of each community's scenario – sometimes the scenario became the story of the scenario. Over a six-month period, 90 hours of tape were recorded. Armand Gatti gave up the idea of making a 90-minute film that he would structure himself and at the same time, he gave up on the notion of making a "film d'auteur". The team decided to make three films, then six, then seven – finally, one for each nationality. In spite of renewed resistance, Armand Gatti was able to obtain funding from the town's social action fund and the cultural intervention fund, as well as help from the INA. It took two years of shift editing, Stéphane Gatti during the day and Hélène Chatelain at night, to finish the work. The editing gives a constant pace for these eight films, which are always well framed and often have moving images. Just as Armand Gatti's theatrical works are a blend of historic context and imaginary transportation, these films tell the story of everyday life to which various imaginative aspects are added – themselves the subject of commentary. The film builds on repetitions and corresponding features from one community to another. Each pivots around a central point: Mijailovic Radovan's identity papers, Uncle Salvador and his images of the Spanish civil war, Charles's sculpture and the memory of Severian, the dance and colour of the Polish group, the Ramadan intonation and the photograph of Gramsci. And yet each work remains the very image of Montbéliard, a schizophrenic nebulosity that is set out through the culture of immigrants and the poetic vision of Armand Gatti. Each film contains several films.
1 La Nouvelle Critique, June-July 1978 (as reported by Emile Breton).
2 Jean-Paul Fargier, "Une expérience de vidéo" (interview with Hélène Chatelain), Cahiers du cinéma, number 287, April 1978.
Yugoslav film: La bataille des 3 P (43')
The Yugoslav film presents Radovan, who has just been sacked by the Peugeot factories. "I thought that this could be an interesting subject for a film but I was wrong, because I though that a film was the kind of thing you see at the cinema, the only cinema that exists for the working class. Tito ordered a film from the Americans about the history of our resistance movement – he stopped being a partisan to become Richard Burton." For Radovan, there can't be two realities captured on film; you have to make a choice between reality and the film market.
The film deals with the problem of racism concerning the Yugoslavs. The "youyou" as seen by others: noisy people "but being noisy in a noisy town is a way of showing that you exist". In the Yugoslav community, the television is switched on when guests visit; it's an honour. The only time the "youyous' make a noise is with their music and songs. A spokesperson for the community says: "The Yugoslav songs fall flat in the Montbéliard region, struck down by a lack of love." Racism doesn't relate to any element of reality; there is no such thing as a typical Yugoslav: "We have 2 alphabets, 3 religions, 4 languages, 5 nationalities, 6 republics and 10 national minorities." Hence the ironic question: "what is a "youyou" and what is a Yugoslav?"
A brief outline of Yugoslav history begins with the assassination of the Austrian Archduke in Sarajevo, which triggered hostilities in the First World War – an incident detailed in all the history books. But it also includes the assassination attempt in Marseille against King Alexander and his host, the French foreign minister, just as it includes those who were hanged for resisting the Nazis. And on an everyday level, the Yugoslavs have a particular interest in football.
The Yugoslav film closely follows Radovan's life. He is engaged in the battle of the 3 P's: Production / Peugeot / Power against Peasant / Poet / Partisan. The first battle: Production versus Peasant. The 20 years of Mijailovic Radovan – his history compared with the Peugeot family history five centuries ago, a journey back through time that is necessary to find the peasant roots of the founder of the dynasty, Hans Peugeot, the peasant. For Radovan there is no escaping his history, which makes him a "youyou". Second battle: Poet versus Peugeot. One day, with his diplomas, Radovan was appointed interpreter – the Poet and Peasant were dead, absorbed by the company. Third battle: Partisan versus Power. Radovan receives a letter of dismissal after an act of violence against one of the factory's production lines.
Armand Gatti remarks that Peugeot corporate culture strengthens fear outside the factory, the fear of living to survive according to the standards. The story now told about Radovan is that one day, when he was fed up, he gave the whole production line a good taste of karate? Where he learns that a man alone is condemned to remain so, right to the end of his days.
Dominique Garrigues