Journal de terrain #1

Depuis le 9 février dernier, me voilà à Prague pour un séjour de 14 semaines sur les traces de la cinématographie nationalisée tchécoslovaque. Cette recherche de terrain s’inscrit dans le cadre de la bourse pour les séjours courts proposées aux doctorant-es tchèques et français-es par le Barrande Fellowship Program qui m’a accordé une aide pour les trois premiers mois de cette recherche. Ainsi que je l’ai suggéré lors de l’audition préparatoire, il me semble aujourd’hui pertinent de reporter ici quelques unes des notes personnelles que je tiens chaque jour dans mon carnet personnel, comme le témoignage d’une recherche en archives et dans la documentation d’un terrain de recherche étranger. Pour commencer, des extraits du projet de recherche proposé au jury du programme en mars 2023

Research project

The thesis I began at Université Paris Cité in September 2021 is focused on Czechoslovak New Wave and its relationship with the historical and political context of the sixties. The expression ‘Czechoslovak New Wave’ refers usually to the generation of students who graduated from Prague film Academy (FAMU) in 1960^[i]. The central role of the FAMU suggested the existence of an artistic school from which a variety of works emerged. The use of a term coined for another context may also have overestimated the influence of the French New Wave as a model for Czechoslovak filmmakers^[ii]. However, the heterogeneity of the Czechoslovak New Wave films, their aesthetic inventiveness and the originality with which they address political issues leads to re-think the relationship between the two contexts. My hypothesis is the total or relative ineffectiveness of an expression borrowed from a different context. Trying to renew the French point on view on Czechoslovak cinema of the sixties, I have been interested in the role played by the French press in the birth of the idea of a ‘Czechoslovak New Wave’. After studying the archive of la Cinémathèque française in Paris^[iii], it has become clear that the French reception could not be the only way to study this corpus. I started to work on the way this corpus was produced in the communist Czechoslovakia and why the economic environment was so different from the precarious one of the French Wave. This led me to question the political dimension of the films and the way they echo the Prague Spring. At this point of my research, I adopt a more general perspective. I would like to follow on from the works of a ‘New cinema history’^[iv] which attempt to encompass historical, economic, social and aesthetic approaches to a specific film context. For this purpose, I rely on the methods of the historical field, in particular the collection and criticism of documents (film or non film), as well as on the tools of cultural history, which invites us to place cultural objects in a social history. I aim to offer a multilevel film history, from production to history of styles^[v]. I try to maintain a dual perspective by going back and forth from Prague to Paris, accepting my French point of view and inserting into this history of a cinematographic movement the history of its international reception.

Purpose and objectives of the short-stay

This short-stay project is conceived as way of decentring my perspective and confronting it with a reality on the ground. After having immersed myself in the French reception in the Parisian archives, this stay will help my research to face the Czech point of view. I have already done a similar work in the study case about three Trezorové filmy, the films banned by the communist government at the beginning of Normalizace which I studied through Czech archives, French reception and guidance of Czech historians and archivists^[vi]. The objectives of this short-stay is to continue this work on a larger scale before starting to write my thesis. This will allow me to deepen my approach to the corpus studied through original documents and secondary sources that are not accessible to me in France.

Premières remarques

Après quelques jours à peine sur le terrain, ces remarques restent liminaires et sont amenées à évoluer dans les semaines à venir. Il apparaît cependant que la question des « archives » va se poser tout au long de ce séjour. Tout d’abord à cause de la nature des archives produites en contexte communiste qui demandent à être déchiffrée pour parfois y lire entre les lignes (c’était l’objet d’une communication que j’ai présentée lors du colloque « Archives et cinéma » organisé par l’association Kinétraces en novembre 2023), comme l’écrit Sonia Combe « L’archive – au sens premier de la « trace » peut être désinformation, avoir été falsifiée. Elle nécessite d’être interrogée »^[vii]. Mais se posent aussi des problèmes plus concrets d’identification et d’accessibilité de ces dites archives. Les lieux ressources sont multiples, ainsi donc que les interlocuteur-rices, et les documents semblent dispersés, aussi en raison du système pyramidal mis en place par les communistes où les institutions étaient en abondance. Il faut alors se demander quelles archives nous souhaitons consulter, c’est-à-dire quels types de documents, parfois sans savoir ceux qui existent réellement. En d’autres termes, il faut aussi se demander ce que nous nommons « archives ». Le travail que j’ai mené la semaine passé autour des brochures de cours des années 1950-1960 et conservée à la bibliothèque de la FAMU m’a déjà permis d’approcher l’histoire de l’école et de ses enseignements, ainsi qu’une vue générale sur un contexte de production. Les manuels consacrés à la production du système de production socialiste tchécoslovaque donne ainsi un aperçu didactique et simplifié de la structure complexe mise en place en 1945 et de son évolution. Elle souligne aussi la cohérence de ce système et le rôle de l’école (voir des écoles, j’aurais l’occasion d’y revenir) dans la formation des futurs travailleur-se-s de l’industrie cinématographique tchécoslovaque dès 1945.

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[i] British film historian Peter Hames produced a pioneering work in the 1980s which he completed in the 2000s. Impeded by the resources available, it seems appropriate to renew his work in light of studies produced by Czech historians, in particular Jan Žalman or Ivan Klimeš.

[ii] For example, French historian Michel Marie in his study of French New Wave as an ‘artistic school’ states that the French experience inspired “other waves” all around the world, encompassing movements as diversified as Cinema Novo in Brazil, Japanese revival of the sixties and Czechoslovak New Wave.

[iii] The archival collection of la Cinémathèque française is composed of press reviews collected by the French association « France Tchécoslovaquie » affiliated with the French Communist Party.

[iv] The term ‘New Cinema History’ is a new approach of film historians who emphasized the necessity to include film history in a history of societies and cultures. It follows the reflections on historiography offered by the French “Nouvelle Histoire” which aims to draft a “history of mentalities”.

[v] My methodology follows the recommendations of Robert Clyde Allen, Douglas Gomery in their Film History: Theory and Practice, as well as recent works on cinema in communist contexts (Dina Iordanova, Anikó Imre, Petra Hanáková, Martine Godet, Natacha Laurent).

[vi] This study case has been presented in a paper in a Conference at Nice University and will be soon published in Cahiers de champs visuels.

[vii] Sonia Combe, D’est en ouest, retour à l’archive ; suivi de La langue de Rameau, Paris : Publications de la Sorbonne, 2013, p. 12-13.

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