https://www.sabzian.be/text/passage-cristina-fernandes-1

Passage: Cristina Fernandes

VERTAALD DOOR TRANSLATED BY TRADUIT PAR Moira Difelice


“Let cinema go to its ruin, that is the only cinema.
Let the world go to its ruin, let it go to its ruin, that is the only politics.”1

This is perhaps the boldest statement I have come across because it is violent and moves beyond the field of cinema. It emerges like a voice in the desert, aimed at no one and everyone. Duras wrote this aphorism in 1977 in Le camion, a book containing not only the screenplay for the film, but also three texts presenting the project, followed by a wonderful interview with Michelle Porte. It is a literary and essayistic object like no other – a masterpiece of film criticism, a well-kept secret.  

In these untamed pages, we discover a woman who speaks her mind, films as she likes, and no longer has anything to lose. Working on the margins and through words, Duras prefers to wander without a destination. She does not know where she is going, she says, but she won’t accept being deprived of her right to be intelligent or to contradict herself – now there is a fine definition of freedom! In a way, she had always been a foreigner to cinema, someone with a writing background who was not accepted by “the police of cinema, those who guard it, who say: the image here, not words in vain”. Perhaps it was that foreignness that drove her to such rebelliousness. Cinema can only carry on if it breaks loose from the monetary shackles that dominate and oppress it, she says. End of story. A bold appeal, without doubt, although the woman who hitchhikes and reinvents her life every night shows us that an act of madness can be an act of love – the greatest of all. In the second text for Le camion, Duras writes: “Cinema already sees the desert of cinema in front of it. Opulent, a billionaire, cinema tries, through financial means that compete with those of oil transactions and electoral campaigns, to rediscover its viewer.”

Nearly fifty years ago, Duras could already see that inflated means of production were the cause of a widespread and growing decadence; cinema had to escape from that withering away that distanced it from people and life, and allow the wind to move again (Jean-Marie Straub turns Hobbes’ thinking around and says: “the wind is nothing but the spirit”). The meaning is clear and urgent: in order to resist, it is necessary to let go of both money and certainties, to venture into the dark. The ability to lose itself is the only condition for cinema’s possibility. A new joy might then emerge, along with something else we don’t yet know. The verdict comes from the beginning of time, it is cinematic and political. Total. As Hölderlin (a poet for times of scarcity, according to the infallible Manuel Gusmão), Duras writes: “Let cinema go to its ruin, that’s the only cinema.”

  • 1“Que le cinéma aille à sa perte, c’est le seul cinéma. Que le monde aille à sa perte, qu’il aille à sa perte, c’est la seule politique.” Marguerite Duras, Le cinéma que je fais : écrits et entretiens, eds. François Bovier et Serge Margel (Paris : P.O.L éditeurs, 2021). English translation published in Marguerite Duras, My Cinema, trans. Daniella Shreir (London: Another Gaze Editions, 2023), 223.

Image from Le camion (Marguerite Duras, 1977)

PASSAGE
24.09.2025
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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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