when History and Cinema are two words that go very well together

Early in the morning au Jean Eustache cinema Pessac, like a tribe, film buffs keen on history invade the screening rooms. News documentaries, costume dramas, animated films on parts of forgotten history and old westerns are on the bill. Ask for the program!

What connection between the flamboyant Cheetah by Luchino Visconti, the very historic “The young Karl Marx” by Raoul Peck or the cult The gold Rush by Chaplin? These films made between 1924 and today all tell the story of the 19th century. This is the main theme of this edition, with more than 40 feature films, often classics but also forgotten nuggets. Why did the 7th Art draw inspiration from this century?

If until the end of the 19th century, the Balzac, Flaubert, Dumas and Hugo were the historians of everyday life, the cinema which was born in 1896 was naturally inspired by this century rich in events and upheavals.

Spectacular inventions, from railroads to steamboats, political turmoil, the birth of great ideologies and epic tales … what more could a director ask for. To travel through the 19th century is to go from Napoleon from Abel Gance until Van Gogh by Minelli.

As pointed out by Pierre-Henri Deleau, general delegate of the festival “What would Hollywood be without the western and 99% of westerns take place in the 19th century, the western is the history of the United States“. Jean-Noel Jeanneney, historian and honorary president of the festival adds:”this long duration carries an abundance of passions, colors, multifaceted creations, collective movements, bloody dramas and happy liberations which the cinema could only seize. “

On the side of dramas and fights, it will be Louise Michel, the rebel by Solveig Anspach, on the side of nascent capitalism To the happiness of the ladies by Julien Duvivier, and for the triumphant industry and the workers’ struggles: Germinal by Yves Allegret. It is surprising to realize that each of these films can be viewed in the light of current earthquakes. The industrial revolution leading to ecological peril when nascent capitalism will lead to an unequal world, sometimes on the verge of social chaos. These films bridging the gap between the 19th and 20th centuries remain to be produced.

Alongside the 19th century retrospective, the festival offers a selection of previously unseen history films including the eagerly awaited Farewell Mr. Haffmann by Fred Cavayé

Because a historical film requires the reconstruction of a distant era, let’s go back to March 2020, when the streets of Montmartre experienced this return to the past. The team of a film invested the streets of the Butte Montmatre to transform them into the setting of the dark years of the Occupation. Posters calling to denounce the Jews and storefronts painted with anti-Semitic slogans recalled those dark and tragic years.

It was about the shooting of Farewell Mr. Haffmann by Fred Cavayé, previewed in the festival’s fiction competition selection. Release scheduled for next January.

Adapted from the play of the same name, the film tells how Joseph Haffmann (Daniel Auteuil), a Jewish jeweler, hands over his shop to François Mercier (Gilles Lellouche) his employee, to save his family from deportation. But the jeweler fails to reach the free zone and finds himself a prisoner in his own cellar to escape the Nazis. Mercier does not hesitate for long between cowardice and courage. A stifling closed-door will follow, a thriller in the days of the collaborators in which Blanche Mercier (Sara Giraudeau) could well be the key, the one that will change the fate of these two men.

Few French films have tackled the question of Collaboration, Lacombe Lucien by Louis Malle or Mr. Klein by Joseph Losey painted a portrait of the collaborators. To recount this period, Fred Cavayé turned into a historian: “I watched documentaries from Ina on these people who collaborated, I also went to the Library of France to see the letters of denunciation”. The stifling atmosphere that emanates from Farewell, Mr. Haffmann takes us back to the time of this choice: collaborate or resist.

Places of history also have their geographies. Yes Mr. Haffmann takes place in the streets of Montmartre during the Occupation, 70 years earlier, this district was that of the Commune. 1871, a bloody event told until now by writers (Victor Hugo in the lead) or press cartoonists.

Because historians have long believed that the Commune had not been immortalized in images. It was without counting on Bruno Braquehais, deaf and mute photographer, who like a war reporter walked through the barricades and immortalized the Communards. Cédric Condon found his precious photo testimonials and tells it in 1871. The common portraits of a revolution. The frontal gaze of the insurgents in front of the object moves, because at this moment the photographer captures the illusion of victory.

But the Commune will be crushed and the Versaillais, victorious, will then divert these images. They will be confiscated or destroyed. Worse, to Braquehais’ chagrin, they will be used by the police to identify the insurgents. At a time when the question of the unnatural alliance between journalists and law enforcement is back in the news, this documentary tells the preliminaries.

At the Pessac festival, the present and the documentary are not forgotten. Finding Commander Massoud through archive images and the testimonies of those who knew him best, in the documentary directed by Nicolas Jallot, has taken a very different turn since August 15. Since the Taliban entered Kabul and took power.

Through his knowledge of Afghanistan, the director of Massoud the heritage traces the icon, the liberator, the one who stands in the way of the Russians and the Taliban, but also his dark side, that of a warlord who sometimes made bad choices.

The greatest strength of the documentary is to introduce us to his son. Ahmad Massoud was 11 years old when his father was assassinated. We see it in archival footage at the Commanding Officer’s funeral. And already in his eyes tinged with sadness, one can read the desire to follow in his father’s footsteps. For Nicolas Jallot the question of the inheritance and the place of the son in the continuation of the fight does not arise.

“VShe is the one and only who resists the Taliban. The question is not whether or not to support him or if he has the shoulders, he is the only one. It is an image, an icon, his son is called to take up the torch, and in addition he looks like him. The difference is that the father was a soldier, the son is a politician. ”

The festival offers many portraits of women. That of Louise Michel in fiction, that of Simone de Beauvoir or the Marguerite Duras. Writing and life by Lisa Baron. “To write is to say nothing, a writer is silent, a book is night” and Marguerite Duras is crying. These confidences open the documentary and sound like the epitaph of Duras’ devouring passion for writing. Lisa Baron, the director, says of Marguerite Duras that she was a committed woman and a frozen lover, but above all a misunderstood writer.

And to see that many were wrong after the success of The Lover, the Goncourt of 1984. It is delicious to watch Jean-Jacques Annaud or Claude Berri try in vain to convince Duras to adapt his bookstore success. His answers are already writing. Nobody managed to capture the author, (apart from Benoît Jacquot) and as she says: “As I write I exist less”.

In contrast, women have remained in the shadows, and some regret it. In The forgotten history of housewives, Michele Dominici tells us about “the wonderful life of a housewife”.

Years 60/70, the 30 glorious ones are exhausted and in their private diaries these women tell us about their boredom, their fatigue, their disappointed hopes after their love at first sight. Michele Dominici knew that in front of a camera it would be difficult to admit these long days of housewife, so it is in their intimate writings that she drew these confidences. “To men, the conquest of the world, to women the conquest of a man”, she said nicely but sadly.

Because marriage at this time means home life and daily work. “When I told people that I was making a film about housewives, I was told: oh well, are you going to put on some funny ads from the 50s / 60s? I replied: no, I will do the opposite. I realized that these women, in their diaries, were uncompromising on their disappointments, unvarnished their misfortunes and that is what I wanted to highlight. In the film I wanted to show that work had a value and that without the work of his wives many men would not have made a career. ”

Pessac Festival
Until Monday November 22
Jean Eustache Cinema, 7 rue des poilus
The program