Abstract
This chapter identifies documentary ‘place’ as a site of contest facilitating a creative dialectical performance between ‘reality’ and ‘re-presentation’. Reflecting on French republicanism and the increasing defensiveness of individual European states, the queer lives represented in the two texts studied position ‘place’ as ‘constituting’. The ‘located’ as framed by clear boundaries—that is those between the private and the public, and the internal and external—is unravelled such that the essential, constructive, and heterotopic dynamics of the documentary encounter are exposed as radical. Under these conditions of dis/integration, Brett asserts that ‘place’ is mourned and lost within ‘space’ as new ideas are envisioned.
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Notes
- 1.
Pacte Civil de Solidarité—civil union partnership, which, becoming law in France in November 1999, ‘enables non-married couples, regardless of the gender of the partners to enter into a legally recognised partnership that offers a number of rights and responsibilities’ (Johnston 2010, p. 33).
- 2.
The first wave of nationalism occurred following the dissolution of the USSR and the Warsaw Pact in 1991, resulting in a number of interstate and intra-state wars (Duyvendak 2011, p. 1).
- 3.
The fixity of the ‘nation’ and associated concepts of ‘family’ and ‘home’ appear also to be channelled in the French context by a desire of its film directors to look elsewhere for subject matter; see, for example: queer radical artist Hervé Joseph Lebrun’s Kanbrik ou le proscrit d’Allah (2007), which recounts the story of a young gay Moroccan who mourns his murdered lover; Louis Dupont’s Être (2006), which looks at the sensitive issue of homosexuality in Algeria; Gabriel Baur’s Venus Boyz (2002), which looks at the Drag Kings phenomenon in New York and London; Philip Brooks’s and Laurent Bocahut’s Woubi Chéri (1998), which is described as the first film of its kind to allow African homosexuals to have a voice of their own (potentially one of the first such global and transnational documentary films). This geographical mobility is not such a clear characteristic in the Italian context, although there are examples there of where the historical and social stability of ‘home’ as coherent within local and national imaginaries is challenged: see, for example, Gabriella Romano’s L’altro ieri (2002) and Ricordare (2004), which deal with the issues of lesbianism and homosexuality during the fascist era; Marcello Mencarini and Barbara Seghezzi’s New Love Meetings (2006), a contemporary version of Pasolini’s Comizi d’Amore/Love Meetings (1965), which was produced entirely on a mobile phone and lasting 93 minutes long (The Guardian 2006).
- 4.
Au-delà de la haine won the Teddy award in 2006 at the Berlin Film Festival.
- 5.
Célébration was filmed between 1998 and 2001. Pierre Bergé still refuses to release this film, which was premiered at the Berlinale 2007. See the following website for an interview of Meyrou and accompanying clips of the film: https://www.dailymotion.com/video/xcl277
- 6.
Subtitles and translations have been obtained from Au-delà de la haine (2006), unless otherwise stated. Original author unidentifiable.
- 7.
The Republican model is frequently accused of maintaining a stance of inclusion and exclusion in relation to the issue of ‘difference’. A major difficulty faced by minority groupings in France is the tension created between ‘le communautarisme’ and the Republican model; Dena Montague explains that ‘[a]nti-communitarianists declare that communitarianists exemplify what is unacceptable and what is at stake if Republican principles are not defended’ (2013, p. 221). Referring to Tevanian (2008), Montague advances her explanation by highlighting that those against communitarianism are deemed ‘rational’ while those who support it are deemed ‘irrational’ in that they are considered to promote what is described as ‘ethnic factionalism’ in English (Montague 2013, p. 221).
- 8.
Ne pleure pas Jeanette: In this nursery rhyme, Jeanette’s unhappiness is expected to be resolved by her being married off to a Baron or a Prince. However, she resists and only wants Pierre, who is in prison. As a result of this, she too will be hanged. Full text can be found at: http://www.momes.net/comptines/personnages/ne-pleure-jeannette.html.
- 9.
Reflecting on Mabo—Life of an Island Man (a film about Eddie Mabo), Davis highlights that ‘[d]rawing on the portraiture tradition, the film’s interviews with family members, friends, and political allies trace out the contours and features of Mabo’s personality. We learn that he was “family-orientated”, “generous”, “humorous”, “egotistical”, and “proud”’ (2004, p. 58). A similar situation is possible in Au-delà de la haine where no trace of François is available. Eddie Mabo fought against ‘[t]he fallacy of Terra Nullius, land belonging to no-one’ which was used ‘systematically, cynically and effectively to deprive the indigenous people of their own land [Torres Strait]’ (Kennedy 2012).
- 10.
Le Petit Robert (2004, p. 1286) ‘À huis clos’—‘Sans que le public sois admis’ [In secret, without admittance of the public].
- 11.
For Foucault, putting it succinctly: ‘heterotopias’ are ‘counter-spaces’, ‘mythical and real contestations of the space in which we live’; ‘heterochronies’ instead draw attention to the sliver of time in which these ‘counter-spaces’ operate (i.e. both are outside dominant notions of space and time) (Vidler et al. 2014, pp. 18–22).
- 12.
Tabous et Transgressions from now onwards.
- 13.
[Johan–intimate journal of a homosexual, summer 1975.] Johan from now onwards.
- 14.
A film starring Serge Avedikian (Guy) and Piotr Stanislas (Rolf), set in war-time Lot-et-Garonne, France, depicting love between a wounded German soldier (Rolf) and local farmer (Guy).
- 15.
Vallois likens Les Phalènes to the French Big Brother reality television show Loft Story (Mitifiot 2013, p. 6). The group is brought together in a night-time urban, Parisian, housewarming party, which turns out to be a temporary and transient space of disillusionment on the part of the newly-arrived provincial (a similar position once occupied by the young filmmaker Vallois himself) (ibid.).
- 16.
See Chap. 2 for discussion on Marc Betz’s ‘textual traces’. In Vallois’s work, these ‘traces’ are identifiable, at a very essential level, in the low budget, contemporary, on-location shooting, responsive and innovative perspectives adopted. It is worth taking note of Neupert’s assessment of the ‘mythical version’ of New Wave directors of the 1950s and 1960s (2007, p. 178). The claim is that these filmmakers sought to remain independent from any formative process that was deemed restrictive, such as those that necessitated the following of certain courses or working initially under the direction of other directors or commercially-driven projects for a period of time (ibid.). Vallois attended L’École Lumière in Paris for his training, and, while having done a small amount of commercial television work, does not suggest in Tabous et Transgressions that he would never have wished not to be extremely successful. This makes the assessment by Mitifiot that Vallois has been excluded from the canon because of his homosexuality all the more plausible (2013, p. 5).
- 17.
- 18.
Homosexual desire (1993) is an updated translation by Daniella Dangoor of Hocquenghem’s Le désir homosexual (1972). This was one of the first queer works to undo purely psychological interpretations of homosexuality, providing invaluable and early insight into contemporary political identities and same-sex desire.
- 19.
Swender (2009, p. 4) provides the following succinct definition of ‘archive footage’: ‘“archive footage” is defined as any recovered actuality footage incorporated into a secondary text—a documentary film—that was not recorded for the specific purpose of being included in that film, whether or not that footage once happened to reside in a recognized film archive’.
- 20.
The emphasis of this type of archiving is on the owner and originator of the material, and not on the professional archivist who previously held a privileged position in terms of, first, dictating the notion and value of an archive, and second, in sequestering the material in a safe and ordered place for preservation (Cook 2012, p. 114). The other previous types are defined as: ‘juridical legacy’, ‘cultural memory’, and ‘societal engagement’ archiving (ibid.).
- 21.
See, for example: Pasolini–un delitto italiano (1995) dir. Marco Tullio Giordana; Un Mondo d’Amore (2001), dir. Aurelio Grimaldi; Amants des hommes (2004), dir. Isabelle Darmengeat; Ma Saison Super 8 (2005), La Révolution du Désir (2006), dir. Alessandro Avellis; Pasolini Prossimo Nostro (2006), dir. Giuseppe Bertolucci; Le Gai Tapant (2011), dirs.Voto et Goa.
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Brett, O. (2018). Mourning ‘Place’. In: Performing Place in French and Italian Queer Documentary Film. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96701-1_3
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