2018 Sacem Day Sacem Day
For the thirtieth edition of the États généraux du film documentaire, the French Society of Authors, Composers and Publishers of Music (Sacem) is happy to renew its support for a festival which has founded its reputation on its original, high-quality programme. The Lussas festival is a reference in the world of documentary, thanks to its commitment and tireless investment in creation and the stimulating avenues of thought it proposes.
Once again this year the Sacem will participate with a carte blanche, an entire day of programming focusing on music in the image, which will include a number of “major musical films” over several sessions, after which you will have the opportunity to see this year’s winner of the best musical documentary award followed by a discussion.
Turning thirty is quite something for a festival, so this year the Sacem has decided to turn the spotlight not on a filmmaker-composer couple, but on La Huit Production. This production company strives to present cultures, history, art and music, with a persistently innovative point of view!
The Sacem carte blanche kicks off with a lot of rock, featuring Emergency Entrance by Jérôme de Missolz, Claude Santiago’s Dégénération Punk and Violent Days by Lucile Chaufour. Then the programme gets more eclectic and international with Johan van der Keuken’s On Animal Locomotion, around six Dutch composers who inspired six filmmakers; Tales from the Torn Symphony by Jacqueline Caux, based on the work by composer Luc Ferrari; Taylor Hackford’s The Reluctant Movie Star, the “making of” of Hail! Hail! Rock’n’Roll, which takes a look at Chuck Berry’s career; and Marc and Éric Hurtado’s Jajouka, quelque chose de bon vient vers toi, retracing the myth of the creation of music in Morocco.
Following this day of carte blanche programming, the two Sacem prizes will be awarded by the composer Laurent Ferlet to Laurent Benhamou and Valentin Langloi for Ahi Na’Ma, a documentary on the traditions and creation of music in Cuba and La Réunion, registered in humanity’s Intangible Cultural Heritage. And a special mention for Nicolas Levy-Beff’s God, the Devil and Rock’n’Roll, which analyzes the sometimes conflicting, sometimes intimate links between rock and religion.
This 2018 edition of the États généraux du film documentaire will be placed under the stars of travels, around various aesthetics and rhythms, around feelings and movement, exchange and poetry.
Jean-Marie Moreau,
President of the Sacem
Author-composer
Celebrations
The seven films presented during this “Sacem day”, organized with the French Society of Music Authors, Composers and Publishers, have this much in common: the music they display is expressed in such an unrestrained, unbridled way that it occupies an excessive place in each one. To give the music breathing room, the filmmakers have been forced to imagine new forms that question the very genre of “musical documentary” itself.
To begin with, these films celebrate music, believe in its power, in its capacity to changer the order of things, be it social, aesthetic or sacred. Rock and roll, from Saint Louis, Mississippi, or Le Havre, Normandy, punk from Paris or London, the rites of the master musicians of Jajouka, the libertarian jazz of Willem Breuker, the political mixed works of Luc Ferrari, all these forms of music exaggeratedly, excessively display a desire to exist in spite of and against everything. In this sense, they are also the cry of the creative necessity within humanity, an expression of the desire to fight it out with everybody and everything. These musical expressions shake up the Real as much as they tear at the seams of the films that aim to capture them.
In each of these films, the music overflows the film, pushing cinema to its limits, forcing it to come to terms with the music’s demands. More or less consciously, the filmmakers break free of everything they know to move off in search of the ideal form to give to their creation. And to achieve this goal, any and all means are good.
Johan van der Keuken’s On Animal Locomotion and Tales from the Torn Symphony by Jacqueline Caux were made on pre-existing music by Willem Breuker and Luc Ferrari but keep documentary in their line of vision. Claude Santiago’s Dégénération punk, the only film in this selection produced for television, relates the fracture of punk based entirely on archive footage. Violent Days, directed by Lucile Chaufour, exists in two forms, a fiction and a documentary (the one screened here). The Reluctant Movie Star, a classic produced by Universal and Keith Richards, of which I must add a word, is the “making of” of the documentary Hail! Hail! Rock’n’Roll, directed by Taylor Hackford to the glory of Chuck Berry. It is almost entirely composed of interviews with the film crew and shows the dark side of the master of rock’n’roll, his hallucinated relationship to money, but also and above all, it is an exceptional testimonial on the condition of an African-American musician. In my memory, there is not a note of music in this film, but here again, music is running the show.
Although some of the filmmakers come from fiction – Lucile Chaufour – or experimental film – Jérôme de Missolz, with the epileptic Emergency Entrance as an opening, Marc and Éric Hurtado, whose vertiginous Jajouka, quelque chose de bon vient vers toi winds up the programme – the directors of these seven films are all experienced documentarists who expand the limits of the genre. This must be emphasized because this programme is a twin celebration, also that of the thirtieth edition of the États généraux du film documentaire. Right from the start, the documentary genre opened up the means for a dialogue between music and image which has never faltered and which now irrigates constantly all the genres of cinema.
As for the music itself, it doesn’t give a damn about the issues, be they social, aesthetic, sacred, documentary, or anything: of its superb mystery, nothing is ever revealed, or so little. Sometimes, nonetheless, a film manages to momentarily lift the veil, to give a clue to the listening, to transmit a vibration, the gates of paradise. Music is the joy of communion, a celebration. The films presented here all make this bet in one way or another.
Stéphane Jourdain (La Huit Production)