Scam Day
The Scam (French Multimedia Authors' Society) has long provided faithful support to the États généraux du documentaire. Our faithfulness is that of a friend, of course, but we must also be faithful to a promise, like in a translation from a foreign language. It is in the name of this faithfulness that the Board of Governors of the Scam last year vigorously protested against the censure, prudently dubbed deprogramming, practised against certain Israeli documentaries.
The assimilation of these documentary filmmakers to the policies of their country comprised in our eyes a simplifying and discriminatory view of things. Would we, in its time, have withdrawn from the programme at Cannes some American films because of the war in Vietnam? Programming a film is to promise its screening; the États généraux should have remained loyal to this promise.
Some Israeli documentaries have been reprogrammed this year. Not all. The Scam regrets this fact and expresses the wish that the États généraux remain faithful to the promised programme and commit themselves to screening all the Israeli documentaries censored last year.
Like every year, the Scam will present an entire day of programming devoted to its "Brouillons d’un rêve" seed fund. Seven documentaries that we supported financially will be screened. We are happy to do this, confirming in this way our loyalty to the documentary filmmakers, their films and their screening.
That is why, despite the fall in revenues which permitted the funding of its cultural support programmes, the Scam has maintained its budget for creation. In this, it remains faithful to its policies.
Guy Seligmann
An Instant above Ourselves
"Memory is a magic place where, in the past as in the present, coexist absence and proximity, cause and effect, the living and the dead; through and by memory, the beings without ubiquity or longevity that we are hold together all moments, all places, rise just for an instant above ourselves." (1)
"Brouillons d’un rêve" (the Multimedia Authors’ Society seed fund) is fifteen years old. Thousands of projects born of individual initiative have been submitted to be read, seen, by authors to authors; many films have been made (2), too often with the author-director’s bare hands, against strong resistance and shown in often haphazard conditions, late in the television night or, more happily, on one of these parallel screening circuits. On August 23rd, seven among the more recent films chosen by the jury (3), will be screened and debated under the Ardèche skies in the company of Agnès Bert and Violaine de Villers.
"Brouillons d’un rêve" is a truly unique system of aid whose foundations were laid fifteen years ago by Charles Brabant, author-director and founder of the Society, recently deceased, and who left behind him immense, enduring and visionary traces marked by the spirit of collective creation, generosity and demanding standards open to all without exception. It is our responsibility to continue along the path he created.
In his political poems, Paul Eluard speaking to his comrade printers said: "We practice the same trade which allows people to see in the night, to see is to understand, to act, and to see is to be or to disappear"; and then later "And may light decide to bear the weight of the world."
And what if, in the half-light of a devastated audiovisual context, by raising us above ourselves, by speaking to, questioning, enlightening us, its audience, like a non-consenting literature, documentary were also a printer of liberty.
Jean-Pierre Mast
(1) Pierre Bergounioux said by Jean-Bertrand Pontalis in En marge des jours (Gallimard)
(2) Financial of 250 000 euros for 420 presented projets, 50 selected. 447 helped projects, 249 films made.
(3) Jury 2007 : Agnès Bert, Violaine de Villers, Evelyne Clavaud, Carmen Castillo, Catalina Vilar, Marie Dumora, Michaël Gaumnitz and Daniel Cling.
Guests : Débats en présence des réalisateurs.
Cocktail offert par la Scam à l'issue de la journée.