http://mubi.com/notebook/posts/politics-and-aesthetics-in-the-straubs-films#dispositif
Some favorite quotes from the article:
" these distinguished people, seated in a garden, make us understand that the logic of profit, the permanence of economic interests and class struggle underlies wars, revolutions, changes of leadership or forms of government. It is a straightforward lesson given across a series of processes of disassociation, gaps between bodies, texts and space."
" in Workers, Peasants: on one side, there are workers and what one could call the soviet ideology that wants to put nature to use, to make roads, to transform it and so on, and to order total mobilization, and, on the other side, one finds peasants, those who agree on the time of germination, of waiting, of the harvest, of rest, of respect for the earth. That is the first aspect. Next, there is nature, which is before speech, and which eventually gives up its place and its power to speech. It’s what is there, what is always there without reason, before all reason, and what does not stop acting, reproducing itself and altering itself at the same time. From which comes the importance of the continual agitation while the men and women are talking: nature doesn’t stop moving. These are insect noises, bird songs, the effects of light on the plants, the trees, on the moss-covered rocks and the dead leaves... The activity of this undomesticated nature is constant. "
"There is most certainly an important evolution over time. I would say that, if an open-air theater is involved, we nevertheless pass from a one kind of theater to another: let’s say from Brecht to Hölderlin or, if you prefer, from a dialectic dispositif to a lyrical dispositif. This is a change of thedispositifs meaning that, I believe, is also a change of Marxism and of Communism between the films of the 1960s and their latest films. here is most certainly an important evolution over time. I would say that, if an open-air theater is involved, we nevertheless pass from a one kind of theater to another: let’s say from Brecht to Hölderlin or, if you prefer, from a dialectic dispositif to a lyrical dispositif. This is a change of thedispositifs meaning that, I believe, is also a change of Marxism and of Communism between the films of the 1960s and their latest films."
" In any case, films continue to live within us, even without commentary: we make our own commentaries on them. In eight or ten days, this film that you have seen this evening will become another thing. Shots, words will leave; a new film will be constructed. You can’t ignore this extension. Memories of films are not uniquely memories of what has been before our eyes at a given moment. Memories of films are memories of everything that, afterward, gets buried. The cinema is made of this sedimentation. Also, if I don’t think that films have to be explained, I believe that one can try to extend them outside of all commentary, interpretive aims."
" The “normal” viewing of a film channels 80% of the elements—the story, the meaning, everything is so mediated that you don’t need to watch everything—whereas the Straubs’ films assume that you must practically integrate all the elements of each shot. In a way, this cinema can be qualified as exemplary because everything in it is visible but this is precisely what is puzzling."
" For the Straubs, the child is not the future of the world."
" the Straubs’ nature is absolutely not a pastoral nature, it is savage, worrisome, cruel and inhuman. It is not idyllic."
" The Straubs seem to think that nothing or almost nothing can be done with actors. Above all because they advocate a certain kind of relationship to the text and actors are not necessarily trained to say or to read texts. Actors are trained to interpret characters, which the Straubs don’t want. They want people who speak and read texts. This means that they are looking for a very material relationship with the text itself. What interests them is to work with actors who not only are not professionals but who are also outside the world of the university and culture"
" The Medvedkine group, or groups actually, stems from another idea. It started in 1967, it lasted until 1974; France was restricted, the France of de Gaulle and Pompidou, in which the workers at Peugeot decided to use cinema to understand their life, their working conditions, because they didn’t see themselves in the media. Except at the time there were no video cameras like today and images couldn’t be made without a minimum of technical knowledge. So they asked filmmakers and technicians close to them in terms of social activism to introduce them, help them, and, concretely, give them lessons. That lasted several months, then, from there, for seven years they made films in which their struggles, their married lives, strikes and doubts appeared. They appropriated their image little by little. It’s a cinema of intervention, reaction and action based on urgency."
" They construct: they construct a very specific space with a precise relationship of voices and bodies. They create a very particular visible universe that assumes an education because it demands attention to the slightest articulation, for example. In Where Lies Your Hidden Smile?, we see a long sequence where the Straubs question the way of pronouncing a letter and the position of the eyes that has to correspond to it. There is such a minutia in the constitution of a space in their work that it is rare for there to be viewers who immediately get it."
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