Original subtitles

We had to trim this tree back.

It was blocking all the light.

I set out on a series of trips, filming here and there...

faces and words, museums, rivers, and art.

I listened to people I met — sometimes by chance —

AGNÈS VARDA FROM HERE TO THERE

especially artists whose work I like.

When I returned from my first trip,

the tree already had new shoots.

I continued my travels, by train or plane,

filming in every city, not to file a report,

but to capture fragments, moments, people.

The tree was coming back to life.

I came and went...

and Jean-Baptiste and I edited the material I'd gathered.

But long before I completed my journeys and my work,

which lasted well over a year,

the tree, with new shoots and leaves,

had grown back all its foliage in less than three months.

You see the process here in under two minutes.

And viewers will see these chronicles over several days.

So this series shoots and leaves, so to speak.

In this episode we'll go to Berlin and Boston.

We'll visit Chris Marker, Nantes, and Portugal,

and peek into the gap between photo and cinema.

On the plane to Berlin.

I'm expected at the cinematheque.

Yes, we love Steiff teddy bears!

Hans Joachim Fetzer always takes me around Berlin.

Not to tourist sites...

but on my quest for bears in the street.

A glimpse of Brandenburg Gate...

and the concrete slabs of the Holocaust Memorial.

A hello to the angel filmed by Wim Wenders...

and at Potsdamer Platz...

a hello to Fassbinder and his Berlin Alexanderplatz.

Here I am at the Filmhaus and its cinematheque, Arsenal...

for a retrospective of my films.

One little mystery: Cléo From 5 to 7 takes place on a Tuesday.

But the German translation of the title

mentions neither Cléo nor Tuesday.

It's Wednesday from 5 to 7. Go figure.

Birgit Kohler runs Arsenal.

She programs the films,

assisted by my friend Hans.

Dominique Bluher joins us.

She teaches film at Harvard.

Together we go to the Hamburger Bahnhof Museum.

Part of its collection is being shown with the title

"Art is Super!"

There are too many artists.

We choose Joseph Beuys, the adventurer.

I'd never seen his giant sculptures made of fat.

I'd read what he said about them. I quote:

"Fat was a great discovery for me...

because as a material it can appear very chaotic and indeterminate.

I could influence it with heat or cold...

and transform it using non-traditional sculpting methods...

such as temperature."

End quote.

Beuys also worked with other materials

like copper, honey, and felt,

which breathes.

Several months later, Dominique brought me to Boston.

From my window I could see the Charles River.

In the building built by Le Corbusier,

she introduced me to her students.

She and Haden Guest brought over...

my five photos and installation called The Widows of Noirmoutier...

with its 14 chairs and 15 screens.

Everyone loves Fine Poutoune.

She was 99 when I filmed her.

Alas, she didn't make it to 100.

Surprise! Dominique is knitting me a sweater

in my favorite color.

A year later, she comes to Paris

and delivers the sweater at my editing studio.

It's so nicely wrapped!

I'm so happy.

Nice quality wool.

It's a mixture of silk...

and wool.

It's huge. It's too big.

It's lovely. Thank you.

You're a knitter! This woman has written about me.

She's an academic.

And it ends with knitting.

A cinematic adventure of a kind.

Guillaume-en-Égypte is here with us.

When he's not wandering the streets, he goes home.

He's the spokesperson for filmmaker Chris Marker,

who pushes discretion to the point of secrecy.

The orange cat represents the man who wants to hide his face.

His studio is a magnificent mess.

In this indescribable jumble are his sources of inspiration,

objects he accumulates,

and his tools for making his documentaries

about distant lands or about nearby strikers and protesters.

There are photos of women...

with a hint of mystery.

Or enhanced by an echo.

He has published books...

and made beautiful and unclassifiable fiction films,

like the famous La Jetée and Level Five.

This is the hidden side of Marker's work...

the secret threads of the labyrinth of his art.

Chris filmed The Case of the Grinning Cat...

as well as filmmakers he likes:

Tarkovsky, Medvedkine,

and Kurosawa when he was shooting Ran.

He became friends with composer Toru Takemitsu.

Aside from cats, Japanese or otherwise...

he has a talking horned owl...

and some other owls.

The owl is a symbol of knowledge, and Chris transmits its legacy.

As for information, it comes from everywhere.

What station is that?

Al Jazeera in English,

the best 24-hour news station by far.

Modeled on CNN, but better.

Why two? Black-and-white and color?

I don't know why I can't get color on my monitor.

Chris gathers information

and once did commentary, drawings, and collages

for the French web magazine Poptronics.

Or more directly.

- And the T-shirt? - I made it.

We sold them, and the profits went to Obama's campaign.

So I participated.

We remember the joy when Obama was elected.

But Chris shows me horrible images

circulated by Obama's enemies.

The Republicans play dirty.

They did a whole series on how "Obama is a dangerous communist."

They showed him as Stalin.

All the modern-day tyrants,

with Obama as the last one.

He also collects historical documents.

This was when I was in the U.S. Army.

Every week they'd send us copies in reduced size.

This was the first in the series,

the end of the war with Japan.

Now they've changed the system.

Here it was very simple.

Now it's the same each time. They just replace the person.

The latest one, from last week. - Are they real?

Of course! Why do you think everything's fake here?

Marker's no fake, but he does lead a double life.

Or rather he exists elsewhere,

virtually, on the website Second Life,

on an archipelago created by Max Moswitzer,

known as Mosmax Hax.

The place is called L'Ouvroir.

Meet Max and Chris's avatars.

The tall guy in the white sweater is Chris.

He talks to an owl.

He dances with his double.

I joined in the dance.

After all, this virtual archipelago has a pavilion

created by Lucien Bookmite

and presided over by my Uncle Yanco, a painter.

Basically, painting rivals the splendor of a bird

and the opulence of the sea or any landscape —

but it surpasses them.

Oh, how I wish —

Between conception and execution,

that's where the tragic difference lies.

As between the cup and the lip, there's bitterness.

The shadow falls.

A quick trot through an imaginary museum devoted to Marker.

It's gigantic!

Kind of scary.

I fall into a hole. It's dizzying.

I'll ask Guillaume to play some piano.

That'll lift me up.

The Cat's Fugue by Scarlatti.

When Guillaume is really tired, he relaxes against the sofa cat.

And when he really needs to unwind,

he lies on his belly on top of it.

You can't imagine how good it feels.

My turn to try the sofa cat.

Then, as I often do, I go gaze at the sea.

But here, today, a river doesn't run into the sea.

The sea runs into the Loire River.

This is Gérard Vaugeois, several years ago.

This train's taking me to Nantes,

which for me will always be Demy's city,

the city of Une chambre en ville.

For this trip down memory lane to remember my friend,

I brought a few materials,

like Michel Colombier's score.

This time we're on a collective voyage...

on leave in Nantes.

Because the town wants to honor

the 20th anniversary of Jacques Demy's death,

and the 50th anniversary of Lola.

Friends and journalists come along.

Here's Gérard Lefort.

Here's Michel Piccoli from Une chambre en ville.

Anouk Aimée... Lola herself.

And our family. Mathieu Demy.

Rosalie.

And me.

And on the right, one of my grandsons who came along.

Upon arrival...

the stars are photographed.

The train station is decorated.

Jean-Marc Ayrault, mayor of Nantes, and his wife Brigitte greet us.

I'm a fervent admirer.

One of four decorated buses awaits.

They show Jacques and images from his films.

We hear his answer to a journalist's question...

"Why do you make movies?"

"Why do I make movies?

Because I love it. Because they move. They're alive.

Because they laugh and cry.

Because inside the theater it's dark and warm,

with a guy playing footsie with you and a girl who moves her foot away,

an asshole behind you talking too loud,

and in front a guy whose wild hair blocks the subtitles.

Because movies dance and sing, and I'm on cloud nine.

Because they're beautiful.

Because filming is like a woman or a man.

It can hurt you, tear you up.

It can be ugly. But it's good anyway.

Because movies zoom and dolly,

because camera, action, cut!

Because we dream at 24 images a second,

so they race through the night

at 86,400 images an hour, making the high-speed train green with envy.

Because they're white and black and so much more.

Because I love it. And it's all I know how to do."

At the multimedia library,

a ballet to the sounds of Jacques' dialogue awaits us,

as well as an exposition.

The inevitable lunch at La Cigale,

which was the Eldorado club in Lola

and the brasserie in Jacquot de Nantes.

Next day, in the Pommeraye Arcade,

another iconic locale for Nantes and cinema,

we meet people and sign autographs

and a book about Jacques Demy

that had just came out.

In the Pommeraye Arcade, Lola is ever-present.

To see Anouk Aimée, 50 years after the shoot,

charming, vivacious,

repeating Lola's coquettish gestures...

was miraculous.

Michel Legrand's theme from Lola filled the air.

As for the shipyards,

the scene of major strikes in 1955 and 1979,

they've been recycled as offices.

And the large hangar

now houses a leisure complex.

There's still a mechanical construction studio

employing many technicians.

They build playful machines designed by François Delarozière

and Pierre Orefice.

Mechanical marine creatures.

Along with Jean-Luc Courcoult, François invented

the giants and elephants of the Royal de Luxe street theater.

Another elephant arrives every day

after a tour around Nantes Island.

It also provides a ride back downtown,

to the soothing calm of the Musée des Beaux-Arts.

A large, beautiful exhibition of Cuban painter Wifredo Lam,

organized by Blandine Chavanne, the museum director.

We hadn't seen an exhibition of his work in 30 years.

He came to my courtyard in the 1960s.

I'd discovered his work in Cuba in 1962, at Saul Yelin's.

I'd enjoyed photographing his daughter Karen.

Forty-three years later,

I got a letter from this little girl, now grown,

who wanted a copy of this photograph

and a print of my film Salut les Cubains.

I brought the picture with me.

I hoped to see this painting again, but no.

The closest one was La Fiancée from Papua New Guinea.

Back to several pieces from the 1940s.

Magic, tropical poetry...

bodies, and vegetation.

Androgynous Orisha,

with breasts and a penis-shaped goatee,

cups her ear and listens to sounds of the forest.

I loved Wifredo Lam's eyes, full of tenderness.

On another occasion...

Ernesto Neto had invaded the atrium...

with his soft shapes...

figs or testicles in an interlacing helix.

Recently there were paintings by Judit Reigl, of Hungarian origin.

Though rarely shown,

her work is rich and powerful,

as is her beautiful face.

The tragedy in New York in September 2001

and the people jumping from the Towers...

inspired variations on the theme of vertical bodies,

already a major aspect of her work.

These bodies are in free fall...

a tragic fall.

Then there are the permanent collections...

including The Wheat Sifters by Courbet...

Gustave.

And two splendid Picassos:

Old Man With a Cane...

and A Couple.

I always go see Eugène Isabey's Shipwreck of The Emily.

This time I'm with Pierrick Sorin.

You get the feeling the artist was suggesting a skull.

Death is about to swallow up

all those poor sailors.

As for Pierrick...

he's currently occupying the former LU factory, of cookie fame.

No longer a factory, LU is now Lieu Unique.

A unique and diverse place.

The trumpets of fame are sounding for Pierrick.

Is he proud of this big expo?

The interesting part is meeting people,

talking to people who come.

But you're spitting on us from up there.

Maybe it means

I like the public, but they scare me a bit.

So I'm keeping them at a distance

by spitting on them.

But I'm also showing off,

drawing attention to myself,

meaning I want the public to like me.

And you wipe the glass off afterwards.

So I can start spitting again.

Otherwise you can't see me.

I wipe off the paint so you can see this little character

expressing himself,

trapped behind his window.

And even more trapped in an aquarium.

You're making fun of yourself.

Acting silly, being a ham.

I'm being a ham,

but kind of a depressed ham.

You sense...

that the guy's trying to escape some form of depression.

And when you run, skate, and laugh on records?

Maybe I'm running after myself.

Maybe I'm trying...

to make my mind catch up with my body.

I wanted to depict the myth of Sisyphus

as someone running endlessly on a record player.

Getting nowhere.

If you listen closely,

you hear snippets of phrases coming from the record.

But just snippets. Not enough to create meaning.

But at the same time it's magic à la Méliès.

Yes, I love doing simple, magical, almost childlike things.

Like this totem of images.

Did you have a book like that as a kid?

Absolutely!

So the expo is you, you, and more you.

I think it's because I'm an only child.

I got used to playing alone very young.

I did everything alone.

The mini-machines accompanying the multi-self-portrait

also appear at concert-happenings,

improvised with Pierre Bastien and François Ripoche.

Pierrick does a light show with excerpts from his videos.

The title of this "remarkable invention"

is the Personal Operator for Facial Surgery.

With Pierrick's permission,

I've jumped ahead in the video.

Behind the Lieu Unique...

is a unique wall.

Up close, this huge wall

is a storefront of opaque windows

sealed for 100 years.

It houses objects from the Store of the Century.

I think Jean Blaise got the idea

after reading George Perec's book, Life: A User's Manual.

I think that's where he got the idea

of collecting objects like that, asking people to bring them in.

I coordinated the project.

In a warehouse,

we set up an area where people came in.

Over three months, 11,855 people came in

and dropped off an object.

We numbered the items

and kept a log of people's names, ages,

why they left the item, what it meant to them.

Then we sealed the objects in cans

and stacked the cans on pallets.

Over the next two weeks, they were placed

in the wall of the Store of the Century.

What motivated the donors

was a receipt we gave them

to give their grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

And those great-grandchildren

can bring in that receipt in 2100 when the cans are opened.

They can't have the item,

because it was donated to the city.

But they can find out what was given.

A clock radio.

A blowtorch.

My telephone.

My health insurance card.

An old nail.

A compass set.

A red hat.

Our first purchase.

An electric train.

Sand from the Loire.

My Rubik's cube.

Metro tickets.

An eel trap.

Baby bottles.

Shoes.

My lucky teddy bear.

I'm always fascinated by the idea of bringing together

as many people as possible —

hundreds, even thousands —

who bring something of themselves.

I'm fascinated by individuals...

their private lives, their inner lives, within a large group.

It's collective memory.

When they analyze it much later,

they'll find that the whole has a meaning.

Further down the Loire,

we reach the sumptuous Regional Center.

In this imposing building, a surprise.

It's raining inside a little shack.

This is the work of Stéphane Thidet.

Though this is just a photograph, I think I still hear the rain.

Or is it a guitar?

The guitar accompanying Amália Rodrigues...

I arrive in Portugal in the rain.

It's raining. Hard!

We played around at the editing table...

freezing these images mid-motion.

Cartier-Bresson called it "the decisive instant."

Case in point.

And it gives me a chance to digress on a subject close to my heart:

movement or no movement.

Cinema and photography.

The instant versus duration.

A decisive moment in Portugal.

Or when this salt worker, hurtling down a salt slope,

reached the level of the roof.

Other times...

I chose people in stillness and the silence of frozen time.

Here's a still portrait

in homage to Buñuel's film L'Age d'or.

But it's just one image among 24 per second in a film sequence.

This is cinema,

with fake blood and pretend suffering.

Here...

at five images per second or in zoom...

I re-filmed photographs to the beat of a Benny Moré song.

This photograph is a composition.

I placed models in relation to a dead goat fallen from a cliff.

Here's another image,

a snapshot taken in Marseille at Le Corbusier's Cité Radieuse.

I walked onto the terrace and clicked.

I often wondered who these people were

and what took place just before and after this moment.

I decided to imagine a script

and make these unknown figures characters in a sketch.

As in cinema, I chose a location,

the Seaside Theater in Sète,

and had a set built of the wall behind the figures.

I assembled a crew.

Equipment was rented.

We set up dolly tracks.

I selected local actors...

and I directed, in 2007...

the unlikely story of a photograph taken in 1955.

It's so beautiful!

So old!

The sea is lovely.

So lovely.

You think they're here?

You should have brought a bonnet.

I know...

You can take some pictures, Mom.

There they are!

Hi, Mom.

What a beautiful baby!

Hi, honey.

- How are you? - Fine.

Give me a kiss.

It was so hot on the coach!

Nice. Very modern.

Look at me and smile.

No, the background's no good. Let's move.

It's nicer over here. Take your places.

Let Jean-Pierre hold his son.

I want to be in the picture with my daughter.

Family photos are always a hit.

But sometimes they miss.

This one was taken by a soldier on leave from WWI.

Back then you had to hold still for a minute or more.

One woman here moved.

So this family photo is missing two people.

The man who took it, doubly absent because he died in the war...

and the woman who became an ectoplasm.

To conclude my digression on images,

here's a photo portrait of a fisherman.

The wall he posed in front of was filmed, and it's rocking.

It's the sea, the ocean.

The Atlantic at the mouth of the Tagus.

We're back in Portugal.

In Lisbon, in Porto, just about everywhere,

we see these famous ceramic tiles:

the azulejos.

They have them at the French Embassy,

where I'm a guest.

It's a museum of ancient art,

except for a fresco by Martinha Maia.

When they host dinners,

they invite the guests to see the chapel.

In the chapel is an angel known as...

the Angel of Silence.

It's the silence in the work of Ana Vieira

that impressed me at the Gulbenkian Foundation.

On walls made of veils,

the objects and furniture of this house barely exist,

yet it's all there.

Chandeliers...

chairs...

a set table.

All is absence and silence.

There's that same absence

in these boxes and crates by the same artist.

Covered by a translucent sheet,

they're like a woman lying under a shroud.

Less secret are the wax saints

displayed in churches where the gold is baroque.

Another style in Porto:

a bridge built by Eiffel...

linking the sardine side of the river with the port wine side.

Two local specialties.

Further along is the beach promenade.

That's where I find Manoel de Oliveira,

the 102-year-old filmmaker

who's still making films...

and his wife Maria Isabel.

We've been invited by the consul.

How did you meet Manoel?

Me?

He saw me for the first time here on the beach.

- When was that? - A long time ago.

We were married in 1941 or 1942. I don't remember.

Have you ever worked with your husband?

What's the title in French?

About the life of Colombo.

- Christopher Columbus. - Right.

Manoel asked Maria Isabel to play a role in that film.

I sang a very pretty song...

when I arrived in America.

"The Lady in the Sea."

A mighty woman with a glowing torch

Whose flame is imprisoned lightning

And whose name is Mother of Exiles

The beacon in her hand warmly welcomes

All the people of the world

Among the guests is João Fernandez.

He runs the Serralves Museum, which is screening my film.

He invites Oliveira to the screening.

He and his wife come. I'm amazed.

At the end of the film I say:

"A sensation combined instantly with the image, which will remain.

While I live, I remember."

And here I film what I live.

I'm the guest filming my own reception.

After answering the audience's questions,

I wanted to hear more from João and Manoel.

I work a lot in cinema, even when I'm not filming.

I write...

film after film after film.

Manoel works with conventions.

He says reality doesn't exist.

He says reality is merely the result of certain conventions,

a mise-en-scène organized by society

to create all the laws

presented to us by this reality we live in.

It's very important, in Manoel's films,

to understand that society becomes the artifice.

Cinema's not the artifice.

Manoel's films help us gain some distance

from this reality imposed on us,

so we can interpret it another way.

This is The Strange Case of Angélica.

Here she lies dead on her deathbed.

A photographer is brought in to take the final image

before she departs.

So cinema becomes an exercise in what's real.

A photograph is, in theory, proof of what's real.

But here it's different.

I think of Chris Marker's film La Jetée...

comprised of photographs,

and suddenly the young woman opens her eyes.

The next part of this magical scene is admirable.

The photographer leans over his balcony...

and looks.

Three enormous tank trucks pass by.

What to make of reality?

Manoel, can you talk about reality and solitude?

Solitude?

I don't know.

Solitude is something...

I have no experience with.

Not yet.

We're alone when we create, aren't we?

No, we're not alone.

The angel of creation is with us.

We're always accompanied.

We don't see him, but he's there.

Angels are a configuration of the spirit.

And our guardian angel?

Our guardian angel...

is destiny, a spirit.

A spirit who commands us.

We believe we're free.

But we don't know the obscure forces...

commanding us.

What force commands Manoel

to do battle for a laugh?

"Who are you fighting?" I asked.

"Destiny!" he replied.

We think it's over.

Not at all.

He wants to amuse his friends.

He asks Rosalie questions. He's interested in my little camera.

I show it to him...

explain how it works.

I let him use it.

I adjust the settings...

but not very well.

Everything's a blur but the raindrops.

Look at me.

Manoel de Oliveira is filming me!

This is my big day!

Here we are, Maria Isabel, Manoel, and I.

We did the math.

Our ages add up to 276 years old.