#Dulac Distribution (France)

[whileiamdying]

The Settlers review – ultra-violent study of Chile’s butchery of its indigenous people

★★★★☆ Europe’s early 20th-century exploitation of Tierra del Fuego is told in an unsparingly bloody drama-thriller by first-time director Felipe Gálvez Haberle

Brutish … Alfredo Castro (left) and Mark Stanley in The Settlers. Photograph: Quijote Films

his almost unbearably brutal and violent western drama-thriller from first-time feature director Felipe Gálvez Haberle was a prize winner at Cannes and Chile’s official entry for best international feature at the Academy Awards. At once explicit and yet mysterious and elliptical, it dramatically recreates some of the story behind the exploitation and colonisation of Tierra del Fuego by European commercial interests and the Santiago political establishment at the beginning of the 20th century. This involved the genocidal slaughter of Indigenous peoples by the now notorious businessman José Menéndez, a kind of Latin American oligarch who had been granted land rights for sheep farming, and used mercenaries to hunt and butcher Patagonian natives; these hired killers included ex-British Army soldier Alexander MacLennan, known as the “red pig”.

Chilean character actor Alfredo Castro plays the cold-eyed Menéndez, and Mark Stanley is the brutish MacLennan who still wears his red military tunic and affects the title “Lieutenant”. An ugly scene suggests that his capacity for violence, always substantial, escalated at least partly due to being brutalised himself. Haberle imagines an American “Indian-hunter” called Bill (Benjamin Westfall) who goes out with MacLennan on their murderous expeditionary adventure into the vast and forbidding southern wilderness and they have a tracker called Segundo (Camilo Arancibia), who is a “mestizo” – part indigenous – and resented by Bill who fears Segundo will turn on them.

There is a scary encounter with another British soldier-for-hire, played with dark menace by Sam Spruell, who appears to have the same vocation as MacLennan, but for whom the violence and alienation have become (even) more normalised. With a terrifyingly empty landscape shot by Simone D’Arcangelo and crazed, clamorous, timpani-clashing score by Harry Allouche, The Settlers is really unsettling: an evocation of the violence and colonial brutality mixed into the foundations of Chile’s nation state, and which, it is implied, provided a lesson in political violence for later on.

And what is worse is the history rewriting and legacy management: a sequence in which Indigenous peoples are forced to pose for semi-official photographs in demure western clothes, coerced into erasing their own distinct identity and appearing to cooperate in a new voluntary submissive absorption into white culture. It’s a fierce, stark, almost primitive parable of cruelty and power.

The Settlers is released on 9 February in UK and Irish cinemas.

[tartyfart]

LIGHT CONE is a nonprofit organization whose aim is the distribution, promotion and preservation of experimental cinema in France and around the world.

LIGHT CONE's primary mission is the distribution of the works in its collection, in their original format whenever possible, to cultural organizations such as nonprofits, cinemas, museums, universities, galleries and festivals.

LIGHT CONE's Documentation Center offers a unique collection of written and audiovisual documents for consultation by researchers and programmers. With the addition, in 1999, of the Experimental Film Archive of Avignon (AFEA), the Documentation Center includes over 5,000 print documents (books, periodicals, catalogues), nearly 12,000 audiovisual documents (digital files, DVDs, Blu-Rays, audio and video tapes...) and 1080 thematic records (biographical and institutional files).

Since 2015, LIGHT CONE Editions publishes ebooks on certain filmmakers in the collection. Currently available are Paolo Gioli by Jean-Michel Bouhours and Rose by Rose Lowder. A print publication of Robert Breer, A to Z has been recently released in partnership with AFEA Editions.

LIGHT CONE also undertakes actions to preserve film works through numerous digitization projects (having been in charge of the large digitization project for the 24/25 web portal in 2011), as well as a digitization program financed by a grant from the National Center of Cinematography (for the films of Patrick Bokanowski, Germaine Dulac and Rose Lowder). LIGHT CONE has taken the initiative to propose an agreement with the Cinémathèque Française regarding the preservation of original negatives.

In 2014, LIGHT CONE received the support of the region Ile-de-France as part of the program Fabrique de Cultures to create a residency program for the post-production of experimental video-based works. The Atelier 105 is open to all experimental filmmakers, whether or not they are members of the organization. A specially equipped workspace in LIGHT CONE's premises, including an editing station, sound mixing software, a color-correction monitor and computers dedicated to file encoding and DCP creation, is made available to the artists.

[ihatesriptwriting]

FRENCH FUCKING IMPRESSIONISM

1920′s - 1930′s

World War I

French economy was devastated.

Film production capacity was seriously depleted.

France lost international markets to the US.

American, German and British films began to dominate the French market.

The two big pre-war French production companies, Pathé and Gaumont, retreated into distribution and exhibition.

“There is cinema before and after La Roue (1923) as there is painting before and after Picasso”.                                                                    -Jean Cocteau

Film trends of the 1920′s

French cinema is known for its connection to realism films; realist films shot on location.

Historical epics / fantasy films / comedies / serials.

Surrealism (avant-garde).

“Impressionist” films;

Some made on a shoe string.

Others made on a vaste budget.

Most impressionist filmmakers moved between commercial ventures and personal, experimental projects.

Several formed their own production compagnies.

Impressionism can be confusing

Cinematic impressionism is NOT related to the late 19th century painting movement.

In cinema it designates a group of innovative filmmakers working from the end of WWI to the coming of sound.

Technical innovators who saw cinema as a means of expression akin to writing and painting.

Key impressionist filmmakers

Louis Delluc

Abel Gance

Dimitri Kirsanoff

Jean Epstein

Germaine Dulac

Marcel L’Herbier.

Louis Delluc and the ciné-club (film society) movement

Birth of sophisticated form of criticism and theory.

Louis Delluc edited and wrote for various film journals advocating that cinema is a true art form.

Part of Cinéma & Cie and Photogénie.

Key characteristics

Location shooting is restrained, natural acting is preferred.

Emphasis on communication of emotions, feelings and impressions.

Evocation of character subjectivity via the depiction of thoughts.

Exploration of character’s mental states and emotions.

Stylistic paradigm

Camerawork;

Camera distance; close-up (as synecdoche, symbol or subjective image).

Camera angle; high or low.

Camera movement; independent of subject, for graphic effects, point of view.

Mise-en-scène;

Lighting; single source, shadows indicating off-screen actions, variety of lighting situations.

Décor.

Arrangement and movement of figures in space.

Optical devices;

As transitions.

As magical effects.

As emphasizing significant details.

As pictoral decoration.

As conveyors of abstract meanings.

As indications of objectivity (mental images, semi-subjective images, optical subjectivity).

Characteristic editing patterns;

Temporal relations between shots (Flashback or fantasy).

Spatial relation between shots (synthetic, glance/object, crosscutting).

Rhythmic relations between shots.

Photogénie

Specific to cinema.

Different perspective.

Relation to Kino-Eye ?

“Any aspect of things, beings or souls whose moral character is enhanced by filming reproduction”.                                                                   -Jean Epstein

Filmography (all links to full movie on YouTube)

-La Roue (The Wheel) (1923) Dir. Abel Gance.

Sources

-David Bordwell, French Impressionist Cinema Culture Dissertations (book).

Recommended viewing (all links to full movie on YouTube)

-Coeur Fidèle (Faithful Heart) (1923) Dir. Jean Epstein.

Early fucking cinema (here)

The fucking cinema of attraction (here)

Narrative fucking continuity/integration (here)

Silent fucking comedies (here)

German fucking expressionism (here)

Soviet fucking montage (here)

Film fucking noir (here)

Hollywood fucking melodrama (here)

Direct fucking cinema and cinéma fucking vérité (here)

Fucking documentary (here)

[reseau-actu]

Guy Sibra est suspecté d’être le chef de la cellule AFO qui aurait préparé des actions contre des sites religieux ou des islamistes radicaux. Ce policier à la retraite a été interpellé puis mis en examen avec neuf autres personnes la semaine dernière.

A Marseille, dans les rangs policiers, le nom de Guy Sibra dit forcément quelque chose. L'homme de 65 ans, qui a été mis en examen pour "association de malfaiteurs en relation avec une entreprise terroriste", mercredi 27 juin, y a fini sa carrière en 2004. Et laissé de nombreux souvenirs aux anciens, qui décrivent un personnage "folklorique et haut en couleur, voire un peu illuminé", et déjà engagé à la droite de la droite. Aujourd'hui, il est suspecté par la justice d'être le chef du groupe Action des forces opérationnelles (AFO), qui préparait des attentats contre des cibles musulmanes au nom d'une lutte contre le péril islamiste.

Lire aussi - Ces militants d'ultradroite voulaient s'en prendre à des musulmans, qui sont-ils?

Lors de ses années marseillaises, notamment au commissariat du 9e arrondissement, il ne cache pas ses opinions. Selon un syndicaliste local, il affiche à l'époque une proximité avec le Mouvement initiative et libertés (MIL), promoteur d'un gaullisme conservateur et adepte de la préférence nationale. A son départ de la police, il quitte la région pour l'Ariège, dans les ­Pyrénées, puis la Charente-­Maritime, où il se fait d'abord remarquer pour son accent du Midi. L'ex-policier a créé successivement deux sociétés et s'est reconverti dans la brocante. Il vend ainsi des armes anciennes et des bijoux.

De 2015 à 2017, il rejoint les Volontaires pour la France

S'il a changé de métier, Guy Sibra a gardé ses idées. Lors des élections locales à Tonnay-­Charente (Charente-Maritime), cet homme aux cheveux blancs mi-longs officie comme délégué pour le compte du Front national, même s'il n'est pas adhérent du parti de Marine Le Pen.

Après les attentats de janvier 2015 contre Charlie Hebdo et l'Hyper Cacher de la porte de Vincennes, il s'associe aux Volontaires pour la France (VPF), dont les fondateurs sont le général Antoine Martinez et Ivan Blot, l'un des fondateurs du Club de l'Horloge, qui se réclame du national-libéralisme. Les VPF forment une association légale voulant "combattre des politiques calamiteuses et dangereuses, insouciantes des dangers que représente l'immigration massive et incontrôlée, à l'origine inquiétante de l'islamisation dangereuse du pays", selon les termes de l'un de leurs communiqués.

Lire aussi - Terrorisme : les réseaux d'ultradroite et d'ultragauche inquiètent aussi la police

A l'automne 2017, pour des raisons encore indéterminées, Guy Sibra quitte les VPF pour créer l'AFO. Le groupuscule est très vite placé sous surveillance par la Direction générale de la sécurité intérieure (DGSI) jusqu'aux dix interpellations, samedi 23 juin. Guy Sibra regardait un match de la Coupe du monde de football lorsqu'il a été arrêté avec sa compagne. Celle-ci a été remise en liberté sous contrôle judiciaire. Il a quant à lui demandé un débat différé sur son sort. Il est maintenu pour l'heure en détention.

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