The purpose of the present thesis

 

The purpose of the present thesis is to show our own experience in life and our apprenticeship of the making of the film la momie à mi-mots: an initiatory tale, a cinematographical danced divertimento.

The first part is centered on the birth of the idea the origin of which is our meeting with Jean Rouch.The main structure of the scenario which has been built out of an original idea born from our own experience is the imaginary structure: "Death-mummification. Rebirth". Dancing has imposed itself upon us for it is the language of the body understandable beyond the limit of the words.

The second part is devoted to the pre-shooting. Our precise and patient work of the learning producer, representating and executive, aims to convince hundreds of organisations and firms to support the film snaking either in nature or with money, having their name on the generic in exchange. Our choice of actors was determined by our meeting with Carolyn Carlson (first part) was conclusive. Another important step of the pre-shooting was the marking ad exploring of the shooting sites (places) (wich resulted in the modification of the scenario) and demands of shooting permits.Then the elaboration of the scheme of work, technical team and collectins the necessary materials have been the last phases of the pre-shooting.

The third part gives a synthesis of our work from the first shooting to the showing of the "end to end".

The fourth part is a reflexion about new shootings, new efforts of production and above all about new mountings of the film, reducing the film to one hour and fifty's show including the setting of various video sequences.As a final of this work, Jean Rouch suggested to transfer our soundless film to what he called "slaughtering" of the "Cinémathèque française".

The fifth part gives an account of the terminal phasis of our work, up to this stage, the organisation of a society of production was a logical step to take. The main part is the mounting of the film divided into three parts:the selting of the final image, mounting of the sound and mixing. This part is an analysis of our study. We showed that it is due to my work as a miniaturist painter, working sequence after sequence which has deeply modified our way of considering the technics of mounting for each scene, I had to invent a new way of setting: two main poetic trends stand out of my method of work: a poetic of treaking point (practice of ellipse in tune with the black face of the film).The rituals of agony and death in particuliar and a poetic of "unism" wich gives preference to groups of death linked with the dance. Our own desir was to divide the film into nine chapters preceded by intertitles that were translated into 13 languages.We painted the miniature ourselves wich underline the chapters of the film, as well as the backgrounds which give support to the generic.

We insisted upon the conclusion of the double movement which has structured our work: the sometimes risky oscilliation between the poetic of haphazard and the practice of stricness. We stressed the coincidence between our learning of Cinema and our learning as a man. We ended our reflexion devoted to the cinema -Isn't the Cinema a modern form mummification and rebirth?