In Praise of Eric Baudelaire

As much as any film­mak­er of his gen­er­a­tion, the Amer­i­can-born, Paris-based artist Eric Baude­laire appears fas­ci­nat­ed by the cinema’s most fun­da­men­tal com­po­nent, name­ly that of the image and its role as an index­i­cal mark­er in our con­cep­tion of past events. That said, Baude­laire is drawn not to the doc­u­ment­ed or record­ed so much as the unknown or undis­closed; in fact, the images he con­cerns him­self with are often­times nonex­is­tent. Over the course of four fea­tures and a pair of shorts, Baude­laire has qui­et­ly worked to reimag­ine both the essay film and its epis­te­mo­log­i­cal capac­i­ty for his­tor­i­cal inquiry.

The mate­r­i­al image itself is sub­ject­ed to inves­ti­ga­tion in both 2009’s [sic] and 2010’s The Makes, two of the director’s ear­ly shorts. The for­mer, a brief piece inspired by a trip through Kyoto, depicts a young woman in a Japan­ese book­store sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly scrap­ing art books of cer­tain pic­to­r­i­al details. In Japan, this act of obscu­ra­tion is known as ​“bokashi,” a pre­emp­tive mea­sure against stim­u­lat­ing unto­ward sex­u­al desire. Here, how­ev­er, we see the girl take a small craft knife to images of nudi­ty as well as archi­tec­ture and land­scape pho­tog­ra­phy. Baudelaire’s com­ment on the sub­jec­tive nature of obscen­i­ty and the dam­ag­ing impli­ca­tions of artis­tic cen­sor­ship are as care­ful­ly artic­u­lat­ed as the woman’s work is pre­cise­ly rendered.

The Makes, mean­while, med­i­tates on an alter­nate cin­e­mat­ic his­to­ry, one in which the great Ital­ian direc­tor Michelan­ge­lo Anto­nioni relo­cat­ed to Japan to pro­duce a series of films which today exist only as unre­al­ized screen­plays. Staged as an inter­view with crit­ic Philippe Azoury, who dis­cuss­es the films as if they’re recog­nised achieve­ments while flip­ping through stills of famous Japan­ese actors, the film pro­duces a intrigu­ing tem­po­ral dis­so­nance between dis­parate peri­ods, places, and peo­ple, our knowl­edge and under­stand­ing of an unknown filmic era made manifest.

The expe­ri­en­tial dis­tance between these sources – between sub­jec­tive and sug­gest­ed notions of cer­tain epochs or events – forms the basis of much of Baudelaire’s fea­ture work. 2011’s In The Anaba­sis of May and Fusako Shigenobu, Masao Adachi, and the 27 Years With­out Images, for exam­ple, the direc­tor inves­ti­gates a chasm of per­son­al mem­o­ry and polit­i­cal amne­sia with respect to the Japan­ese Red Army and their coali­tion through­out the 1970s and ​‘80s with the People’s Front for the Lib­er­a­tion of Pales­tine. Through a com­bi­na­tion of vin­tage film clips, new­ly shot 8mm footage of Beirut and Tokyo, and the voiceover reflec­tions of May Shigenobu, daugh­ter of the late founder of the JRA, and con­tro­ver­sial film­mak­er Masao Adachi, who set aside his artis­tic aspi­ra­tions to join in the Pales­tin­ian cause, Baude­laire is able to cin­e­mat­i­cal­ly recon­struct an era with no visu­al ana­logue for the atroc­i­ties that plagued a nation and con­tin­ue to affect future generations.

A com­pan­ion piece of sorts, 2013’s The Ugly One con­sid­ers this pecu­liar cul­tur­al eli­sion by not only enlist­ing Adachi once more to pro­vide ver­bal rec­ol­lec­tions, but also by con­struct­ing a fic­tion­alised frame­work to act as com­pli­ment to these mem­o­ries. Inter­spersed amidst these rumi­na­tions are con­tem­pla­tive images of the Lebanese land­scape, as well as the sto­ry of Michel and Lili (played by Rabih Mroue and Juli­ette Navis), whose seem­ing­ly idyl­lic lives are tran­spir­ing against a back­drop of vio­lence. Their role in the var­i­ous off­screen crises are dra­ma­tized through increas­ing­ly tense episodes of ide­o­log­i­cal tur­moil, with Beirut act­ing as epi­cen­ter for their rad­i­cal dis­plays of dis­con­tent. If The Anaba­sis plays as a vol­ley of autonomous address­es to an abstract recip­i­ent, The Ugly One com­mu­ni­cates direct­ly to the view­er by way of the most vis­cer­al of sto­ry­telling means.

Baudelaire’s most recent work, 2014’s Let­ters to Max, takes cor­re­spon­dence as its prin­ci­pal nar­ra­tive device. Con­struct­ed as an exchange between Baude­laire and Max­im Gvin­jia, with a selec­tion of the director’s let­ters read aloud by the for­mer For­eign Min­is­ter of the unrec­og­nized Geor­gian state of Abk­hazia, the film attempts the most ambi­tious of feats, con­jur­ing a cin­e­mat­ic con­tin­u­um for a coun­try which for all intents and pur­pos­es doesn’t exist. Through a series of dia­logues pre­sent­ed as onscreen inquiries and over­heard answers, Baude­laire con­structs a con­ver­sa­tion which itself is con­stant­ly regen­er­at­ing and rene­go­ti­at­ing the extent of its own verisimil­i­tude – Abk­hazia is of nom­i­nal dis­re­gard, sug­gest­ing the inabil­i­ty for such a cor­re­spon­dence to fea­si­bly transpire.

In ques­tion­ing the very def­i­n­i­tion of delin­eation and the verac­i­ty of images as they per­tain to an osten­si­bly invis­i­ble sub­ject, the film’s reflex­ive con­struc­tion effec­tive­ly stages a dis­cus­sion of onto­log­i­cal ram­i­fi­ca­tions, with two friends act­ing as con­duits for a lit­er­al and fig­u­ra­tive state of cul­tur­al con­scious­ness. And in that sense, Let­ters to Max may be both Baudelaire’s most inquis­i­tive and lucid con­sid­er­a­tion yet of the image as a bea­con of his­tor­i­cal cog­ni­sance – events may be lost to time or mem­o­ry, but art retains the abil­i­ty to bring the past into direct dis­course with the present.

A sea­son of films by Eric Baude­laire will screen on MUBI