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François Pain on the Music of Marc Mellits

Some words about my work on the music of Marc Mellits

by François Pain

I met Marc Mellits in August 2009 during the festival “Musique en roue libre” organized by a young cellist, Fabrice Bihan, Marc’s friend. It was at his request that I worked with Marc.

All of my work that accompanies the music of Marc Mellits come from experimental films I’ve made over the past 20 years. I also borrowed images from directors who have made their mark on the history of cinema, such as Dziga Vertov, Artavazd Pelechian,Eisenstein, Flaherty, and archival footage from Pelechian’s films (“Our Century”, “The inhabitants,” “In the beginning”).

For this project I mainly wanted an agreement between the sound material and visual material; to adapt the images to the rhythm of music. It is not only illustration.

Artavazd Pelechian, in an interview with Jean-Luc Godard said two things that I tried to apply in my own work in general. About sound he said:

“When the sound finally came at the end of 20th, the great filmmakers like Griffith, Chaplin and Eisenstein have been afraid. They felt that the sound was a step backwards. They were not wrong, but for other reasons than what they believe: the sound came not interfere with the editing, he came to replace the image ….. I think you can see the sound and hear images. In my films, the image is on the side of sound and sound side of the image.”

That’s what I try to do with Marc’s music, listen to pictures and watch sound. He also said this about what makes a film:

“The film is based on three factors: space, time, the real movement. These three elements exist in nature, but among the arts, only the film are found. Thanks to them, it can find the secret movement of matter. ”

In the images I filmed on the water, it is precisely this matter-in-motion that only the camera can capture. Also, in the images taken from a train traveling at 300 kilometers per hour, the speed of matter is captured.

 Opening

This was the only “figure imposed” by Fabrice. It was the centenary year of the Channel crossing by Blériot, hero of the region where the festival took place. Going to film the scene of his flight to England, to Cap Gris Nez, I stopped on the beach in the town of Calais where there was a kite championship. The idea seemed interesting to relate these toys with the first “flying objects” in the history of aeronautics. I knew that was done in Pelechian’s “Our Century” and I planned to use this archival footage. “Opening” is a jubilant music. I felt the same jubilation at the time of editing; the music dictated the editing. It makes these flying fools trying to tame their machines into a burlesque of sorts.
Color images refer to the reality of the event: it is here that Bleriot flew. Background seemingly quiet, seemingly alone, the sea is agitated by the wind and the sky is threatening.

 Srecan Rodendan, Marija! – Broken Glass.

I love traveling by train in France, Europe, Japan… and I love making images from a train. The evolution of video equipment has played an important role in my pleasure filming speed, the landscapes, matter-in-motion. The use of shutter speed the camera captures the movement of objects that pass in a good resolution and define the internal rhythm of each plan.

Broken Glass is from trips between Paris and a provincial town. In the background, a nuclear power plant and a cloudy sky. The images of the landscape scroll on the same repetitive rhythm as the music. Apart from the scenery, I was interested in the catenaries, power lines which look like a musical staff. In the same way, the images of ballast, rails, graffitis on the walls, and fields take the rhythm but also the speed of matter. The film ends with the nuclear power plant and a cloud, like mushroom cloud.

For Srecan Rodendan, Marija!, all images are from a trip between Tokyo and Kyoto in the high speed train, the shinkansen. I used the same technique as for the images of Broken Glass. For this film I first made an editing with landscapes, cities, railway stations and an other editing with only images of catenaries.
Then I treated both of these two editings in two ways, one giving a sort of animated mandala, the second treatment based on mirror effects. Japan is a country where water is predominant. I then drew on these arrangements to achieve the resulting film.

Paranoid Cheese

These are images of an artificial pond near my home in the countryside. It was early autumn, the water level was still low, vegetation usually submerged, left out his dead wood. It was a misty morning and all that was over water was reflected and formed a surprising mixture of signs of which emerged a sense of deep calm, very Zen, very mysterious. The camera scans the landscape as to try decrypt the runic alphabet. The music, in a very slow tempo, dialogues with the images it accompanies, questions these signs, and accompanies their decryption, while leaving open the mystery.

Machin IV

As its name implies, Machin IV is ” mechanical” music. I did not have in my own films, images that make reference to the work of the machine, of industry. On the other hand, I did have the opportunity to present a film about the Russian cinema. I thus found in the movie “Enthusiasm” of Dziga Vertov some images to properly accompany this music.

Lefty’s Elegy

A very slow march of demonstrators shot at ground level, with this very slow tempo music.

Dreadlocked

I was born near a river and the water always fascinated me. During years I filmed the movements of the water. I tried to get all the states, the waterfalls, the bustles, the waves, the quiet waters, the brilliances, etc. I tried to penetrate into the material, the subject. It is these images which accompany Dreadlocked.

Machin V

The rhythm of the music brought me back to archival images used by Artavd Pelechian in one of his first films, “In the beginning”. The music which accompanies the images is on a rhythm identical to that of the Machin V.

 

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