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Fortini Cani
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Fortini Cani
IDFA 1994

Fortini Cani

Jean-Marie Straub, Danielle Huillet
England, France, Germany, Italy, United States
1976
83 min
n.a.
Festival history
Van de Staak is an improvising barbarian, compared to Straub/Huillet. With them, the trade of filmmaking has been thought out in the smallest details, the cinematic space built up from the most humble foundation. Their films are meditative photography in time. Its purity leads you to an old master like Atget. How do I photograph a text, how do I surround a text with photographed space? A question which precedes cinema, which has in fact always been skipped by cinema. Looking for an answer to that question, Jean-Marie Straub en Danielle Huillet return to the essence of film: where motion is unleashed. Of FORTINI/CANI (from 'The dogs of the Sinai' by Franco Fortini) I remember a man who is reading aloud, seen in profile, sitting on a terrace in passing light in the rhythm of the language in the changing tempo of alternating shots, all in the same focal plane. Stories and thoughts about the persecution of the Jews and the anti-fascist resistance, denial and rejection of denial: that of the Palestinian people. Mutilation stages of a society (perceptible again today in Italy), scenes of the action: a golden city like a buzzing map below us, speeding traffic around a corner. Then, suddenly, a deep silence full of distant sounds. A mountain range with a panoramic and picturesque valley, perpetually revolving around us, slowly fixes itself in our eyes and ears (in that jubilant scenery the slaughter took place). Johan van der Keuken
Credits
Director