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.

Estamos en París en el año 1871; mientras que un periodista de Versalles TV transmite información falsamente tranquilizadora, se crea una Televisión Comunal, que refleja la opinión de los insurgentes de la capital francesa. Así, estas dos cadenas cubren la revolución y gobierno de la Comuna de París, entre el 26 de marzo y el 28 de mayo de 1871, de una manera totalmente diferente. El canal público oficial, TV Nacional de Versalles, da una versión oral y excluyente de los acontecimientos, que contrasta con la de la recién creada TV Comunal. Esta última pretende dar la palabra a los mismos ciudadanos que la otra televisión ciega y amordaza. Pero no sólo eso sino que pretende dar la palabra también a los actores que encarnan a esos ciudadanos, y que tienen su opinión acerca de las injusticias que ciento treinta y tres años después perviven en la sociedad contemporánea.

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.