2010 Friends of the États généraux Friends of the États généraux
"Seeing is not enough to know",
Claude Lévi-Strauss in Tristes Tropiques.
The Friends of the États généraux du documentaire de Lussas will present this year a programme motivated by the death at the age of one hundread of the greatest French anthropologist of the twentieth century, Claude Lévi-Strauss. Anthropology was born in the same period as the cinema, along with psychoanalysis, palaeontology, linguistics and phenomenology. Whether by art or sciences, all these movements of mind and creation question human beings at our state of birth, all try to seize something which might be at the origin of our species, the universal characteristics of our humanity. Amazonian Amerindians were the people with whom Claude Lévi-Strauss chose to carry out his field work. Documentary cinema is a tool cut out for anthropology and the work of Jean Rouch cannot be separated from the movement which renewed the whole of cinema, as much in documentary as in fiction. The Amazon remains today a vital nerve centre of the planet, the extremely crucial, defining home of our humanity in its present phase of disappearance.
We will project a first film shot by a Brazilian anthropologist in homage to Lévi-Strauss two years before his death. In the film by Marcelo Fortaleza Flores, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Auprès de l’Amazonie, Lévi-Strauss discusses his encounter in 1938 with the Nambikwara, at the origin of his most famous book: Tristes Tropiques (1955).
We continue with Yves Billon's 1973 film, La Guerre de pacification en Amazonie. Then we will show examples of the work done in the video workshops led by the franco-brazilian documentary film-maker Vincent Carelli which allow people from the Amazonian tribes to make their own films.
In the evening, we will present a film directed by Vincent Carelli. In 2009, he completed an enquiry into the genocide carried out by white farmers in 1985 in which he talks with survivors and witnesses: Corumbiara.
Marie-José Mondzain
Coordination : Presentation and debates by Marie-José Mondzain (philosopher).
Guests : In the presence of Yves Billon.