Philipe Bordier

Reel 35 of Gérard Courant’s on-going Cinematon series.

Cinématon is a 156-hour long experimental film by French director Gérard Courant. It was the longest film ever released until 2011. Composed over 36 years from 1978 until 2006, it consists of a series of over 2,821 silent vignettes (cinématons), each 3 minutes and 25 seconds long, of various celebrities, artists, journalists and friends of the director, each doing whatever they want for the allotted time. Subjects of the film include directors Barbet Schroeder, Nagisa Oshima, Volker Schlöndorff, Ken Loach, Benjamin Cuq, Youssef Chahine, Wim Wenders, Joseph Losey, Jean-Luc Godard, Samuel Fuller and Terry Gilliam, chess grandmaster Joël Lautier, and actors Roberto Benigni, Stéphane Audran, Julie Delpy and Lesley Chatterley. Gilliam is featured eating a 100-franc note, while Fuller smokes a cigar. Courant's favourite subject was a 7-month-old baby. The film was screened in its then-entirety in Avignon in November 2009 and was screened in Redondo Beach, CA on April 9, 2010.

Various people break down in front a camera. Two women insult a man that is meditating.

Various people break down in front a camera. Two women insult a man that is meditating.

Various people break down in front a camera. Two women insult a man that is meditating.

This bitter and ironic satire illustrates the universal problems with youth and their revolt against the bourgeois establishment. The man becomes a symbolic victim of what he is protesting and resigns himself to a gloomy future with bleak prospects for humankind. This directorial debut for Jean Pierre Lajournade was well received at the 1970 Mannheim Film Festival.

Only Bordier's singular intransigence allowed him to articulate the seriousness of existence with such distancing, to manifest his hatred of the old world with such icy elegance.

Only Bordier's singular intransigence allowed him to articulate the seriousness of existence with such distancing, to manifest his hatred of the old world with such icy elegance.

Only Bordier's singular intransigence allowed him to articulate the seriousness of existence with such distancing, to manifest his hatred of the old world with such icy elegance.

The film is a series of images, shown in short takes (anywhere from a few frames to 30 seconds), of more or less fetishistic imagery (something Bouyxou was particularly fond of). After a credit and title sequence written on naked human flesh, the viewer sees the brilliant Molinier standing sanctimoniously in front of a screen. Soon he is joined by a woman, and he fondles her breasts while retaining his signature grin. Molinier seems to almost be the 'ringmaster' of the incidents, with almost every minute episode cutting back to him. His presence is one thing that makes this film remarkable; the same sort of aura that exists in Moliniers famous self-portraits and cut-ups is present here, on screen. (esotika.blogspot.com)