https://www.sabzian.be/text/letter-to-a-young-filmmaker

Letter to a Young Filmmaker

VERTAALD DOOR TRANSLATED BY TRADUIT PAR Clodagh Kinsella

You have chosen to express yourself through sound and image. You have chosen an essentially revolutionary and political act: making films. Take care not to be diverted by the most paradoxical and spurious of motives.

Preserve your independence: it is also that of the viewer; it is “mutual”.

You are called upon to create audiovisual structures; they convey and guarantee nothing but their own reality. Any other truth can be underpinned solely by the viewer’s own understanding and by yours alone, at the moment when your work takes form.

You provide the structures, and the viewer will give them meaning, even if – and precisely because – your film is built on the pretext, and solely on the pretext, of a narrative and imaginary element.

There is no such thing as a good subject. There is only a good project. Your film is a cinematic object, whose subject – the principal one – is the viewer, and the viewer alone. You will not take their place, but will watch them, observe them, scrutinise them through the gaze of your film upon them, through listening to your film directed at them. Without complacency and with precision, you will first have exercised this gaze, this act of listening – the film’s effect – upon yourself, the very first viewer of a cinematic object and of the work it performs.

You do not have to fill a latent void, even if you are (and will be) the object of this demand; but the film you construct will take into account a latent desire in the viewer: not to be taken care of (which is what is commonly desired for them), but to act and to be acted upon by the film and within it.

Having embraced the difficult desire to become a filmmaker, know that this desire is fragile, and that all the sirens and mirages of the film industry will exert themselves to the full to distract and divert you from that desire.

In the struggle that lies ahead, be as unyielding as possible.

Image from L’été (Marcel Hanoun, 1968) | © Re:Voir

This text was originally published in Écran in 1977.

ARTICLE
FR EN
In Passage, Sabzian invites film critics, authors, filmmakers and spectators to send a text or fragment on cinema that left a lasting impression.
Pour Passage, Sabzian demande à des critiques de cinéma, auteurs, cinéastes et spectateurs un texte ou un fragment qui les a marqués.
In Passage vraagt Sabzian filmcritici, auteurs, filmmakers en toeschouwers naar een tekst of een fragment dat ooit een blijvende indruk op hen achterliet.
The Prisma section is a series of short reflections on cinema. A Prisma always has the same length – exactly 2000 characters – and is accompanied by one image. It is a short-distance exercise, a miniature text in which one detail or element is refracted into the spectrum of a larger idea or observation.
La rubrique Prisma est une série de courtes réflexions sur le cinéma. Tous les Prisma ont la même longueur – exactement 2000 caractères – et sont accompagnés d'une seule image. Exercices à courte distance, les Prisma consistent en un texte miniature dans lequel un détail ou élément se détache du spectre d'une penséée ou observation plus large.
De Prisma-rubriek is een reeks korte reflecties over cinema. Een Prisma heeft altijd dezelfde lengte – precies 2000 tekens – en wordt begeleid door één beeld. Een Prisma is een oefening op de korte afstand, een miniatuurtekst waarin één detail of element in het spectrum van een grotere gedachte of observatie breekt.
Jacques Tati once said, “I want the film to start the moment you leave the cinema.” A film fixes itself in your movements and your way of looking at things. After a Chaplin film, you catch yourself doing clumsy jumps, after a Rohmer it’s always summer, and the ghost of Akerman undeniably haunts the kitchen. In this feature, a Sabzian editor takes a film outside and discovers cross-connections between cinema and life.
Jacques Tati once said, “I want the film to start the moment you leave the cinema.” A film fixes itself in your movements and your way of looking at things. After a Chaplin film, you catch yourself doing clumsy jumps, after a Rohmer it’s always summer, and the ghost of Akerman undeniably haunts the kitchen. In this feature, a Sabzian editor takes a film outside and discovers cross-connections between cinema and life.
Jacques Tati zei ooit: “Ik wil dat de film begint op het moment dat je de cinemazaal verlaat.” Een film zet zich vast in je bewegingen en je manier van kijken. Na een film van Chaplin betrap je jezelf op klungelige sprongen, na een Rohmer is het altijd zomer en de geest van Chantal Akerman waart onomstotelijk rond in de keuken. In deze rubriek neemt een Sabzian-redactielid een film mee naar buiten en ontwaart kruisverbindingen tussen cinema en leven.

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