Jean-François Priester

For more than 140 days, the workers at Legré-Mante occupied "their" factory, a leader on the world tartaric acid market, to protest and denounce a fraudulent liquidation, express their anger, and fight for justice. They obtained none of their demands and also lost their appeal to the commercial court's verdict of bankruptcy. However, when we see the dilapidated state of the buildings and workshops, there is no need for any explanation to understand the conditions in which the Legré-Mante workers carried out their jobs. Nor is there any need for much proof for us to think that this closure had been planned for a long time, driven by questions of short term profits: to be specific, the sale of a terrain ideally situated in front of the sea and at the foot of the future Calanques Park in Marseille.

We are in the year 1871. A journalist for Versailles Television broadcasts a soothing and official view of events while a Commune television is set up to provide the perspectives of the Paris rebels. On a stage-like set, more than 200 actors interpret characters of the Commune, especially the Popincourt neighbourhood in the XIth arrondissement. They voice their own thoughts and feelings concerning the social and political reforms. The scenes consist mainly of long camera takes.

The principle of the film l'Ébranlement is twofold, based on the visual approximation of two distant terms (fencing and fireworks) and on a principle of expenditure (the possible engendering of one by the other). Images of fireworks are edited in echo to shots of a fencing duel, situated in a perforated architecture, with arcades (the Vieille Charité, in Marseille), which multiplies the incessant passages from shadow to light. At the moment of the clash (the point of the foil touching the opponent's body), the fireworks unfold as if the contact was established - an explosion, an epidemic mode of contamination by successive stings, point by point. The touch of the foil answers the blaze of the sky. As soon as the sky darkens, after the last spikes of light are extinguished, the fencing duel can be resumed, like a carillon or an automatic game. The attack is a flash of lightning that sets the collar on fire.

A bicycle race is held every year in a pass of the Alps called Parpaillon. With the energy of a skillful cyclist perhaps as a great tribute to François, the mailman played by Tati in The Big Day, Moullet makes a comedy by pedaling at a pace that allows him to reinvent the possibilities of film gags. La Cabale des oursins is a guided tour to the northern France, transformed into a Geography lesson in the pataphysical style of an Alfred Jarry disciple.