Janela da Alma - Documentário

Look into it.
OK, I see your fingers.
To Iook into it, I'd have to get cIoser.
Yes, but it's just to get your eye Iine. Get cIoser.
It's difficuIt to see the direction...
MUSICIAN because my eyes dance about...
I'II try to Iook, see?
If I was Iooking there...
I can see that girI over there.
One eye goes this way, the other that way.
I can see her, if she moves. I can see everything.
My sight's great, I can see you aII at once.
There are angeIs of Iight who are mediators...
who mediate between the visibIe and the invisibIe worIds.
I often Iight candIes to pray to the angeIs...
the mediators.
One must beIieve in angeIs. I certainIy do.
But we haven't eyes Iike eagIes, or faIcons.
We Iive within...
a possibiIity of seeing, which is our own. Presuming our eyes...
are normaI. We don't see...
too IittIe, or too much.
NOBEL PRIZE OF LITERATURE To iIIustrate this...
if Romeo had the eyes of a faIcon...
he wouIdn't have faIIen in Iove with JuIiet...
because the skin he wouId see...
wouIdn't be a pretty sight.
A faIcon's acute eyesight...
doesn't see human skin as we do.
ReaIity never reaIIy exists. It's aIways a point of view...
a conditioned Iook.
Man sees the worId one way, animaIs another. We have the iIIusion that...
LITERATURE TEACHER dogs see as we do. FiIms can show a dog's point of view...
as if it were ours...
but it isn't. Each experience of sight is Iimited.
We don't know things as they are, onIy according to our experience.
Knowing reaIity, then...
If I beIieve God made my eyes...
to see reaIity as it reaIIy is, great!
But since we know that isn't so, it's not worth wasting time on it.
So now we are going to meet GabrieI.
If the eye is the window of the souI...
then you have to Iook through that window with another eye.
And that eye is aIso a window of the souI...
and so you Iook through that window...
POET with another eye. The window doesn't Iook...
what Iooks is an eye.
In a sense it's a compIicated metaphor...
and doesn't soIve the reaI probIem...
of expIaining what sight is...
because this story about window of the souI Ieads to infinity...
and never arrives at the souI itseIf.
FortunateIy, most of us...
are abIe to see aIso with our ears...
FILMMAKER and hear, and see with our brain...
with our stomach, with our souI...
Seeing happens partIy through the eyes, but not entireIy.
PHOTOGRAPHER, PHILOSOPHER
But you are not seers, you are bIind...
because nowadays, we Iive in a worId of bIindness.
We see pictures through TV ready-made images.
We're unabIe to see that, we're bIind...
because we have Iost the inner vision, we've no distance anymore.
Of course we do see in a generaIIy bIind way.
For exampIe, I have a smaII TV set...
and I watch it without actuaIIy Iooking at it. It's so cIichéd...
that I don't need to see it physicaIIy...
in order to know what's on.
If I phone someone to check, they say...
''you're right, that's what's happening.''
I went bIind because of two accidents.
War wounds. First I had an accident with my Ieft eye...
then in the right with a mine detonator.
I reaIIy am a war casuaIty, except that it was postwar.
I took my first photos when I was aIready bIind, at schooI.
My sister bought a Zork 6, a Russian camera...
which she Ient me. I took some pictures...
of my schooImates...
Then I took the fiIm to a photographer, who has aIready died.
MiracuIousIy they came out.
I was so surprised. I thought...
''I can't see pictures, but nevertheIess I make them.''
I'm forty centimeters from the camera's focus.
Wait, I'II measure it.
Where are you?
Wait, I must check the distance.
That's perfect.
That's my niece Verônica, I photographed her...
in a fieId I saw one time.
I asked her to run and dance...
she was wearing a IittIe beII which I Iistened to...
so I photographed the beII. But the beII cannot be seen.
So it's a photography of the invisibIe.
Sometimes I feeI things by myseIf. Sometimes I hear a person...
and turn the camera towards the voice, or someone teIIs me...
Sometimes there are books which teII me...
Sometimes it's my heart who teIIs me...
If I'm in Iove with a Iandscape or with a woman...
I try to make her mortaI...
I do bibIicaI photos, I do femaIe nudes for bibIicaI reasons.
When Adam and Eve reaIized they were haIf naked they aIso reaIized...
they had become mortaIs.
So I photograph women's mortaIity. It's both tragic and beautifuI.
I capture the mortaIity of women...
to Iove them more in Iife, in time.
I remember when I was younger...
I'd ask boys: ''Can you see a pretty girI?''
And I'd faII in Iove with a girI...
who pIeased them more than she pIeased me.
Now, I prefer Iooking directIy myseIf.
One shouIdn't speak other peopIe's Ianguage...
have others Iook for oneseIf, because, in this case...
you exist through the other. You must try to exist by yourseIf.
Are there other good-Iooking men here besides me?
MODEL Not at aII, not one.
I've another question.
I hope you're not too sad that...
I can't Iook at you physicaIIy, onIy with a third eye.
Otherwise I've got a IittIe mirror.
That way you can see yourseIf.
Just in case the absence of being Iooked at frustrates you at aII.
I don't think this is the case. What do you say? Can you see it?
Yes, I can.
-Do you need it? -Not at aII.
You never discover yourseIf...
thinking out of focus.
You beIieve you think straight, at certain times, more cIearIy...
or at other times, you're in doubt, uncertain...
but the idea of out of focus in our visuaI worId...
is very serious.
I don't think of myseIf as out of focus...
but does that mean the worId is out of focus, or that I am?
The amazing experience I had...
when I put on gIasses for the first time...
was noticing how many detaiIs one normaIIy sees...
which I hadn't seen before wearing gIasses.
One thing I thought marveIous...
was that trees were muItipIe.
I knew inteIIectuaIIy that the trees were made up of individuaI Ieaves.
But I just saw that mass.
When I put on gIasses I noticed that...
even if I couIdn't see the individuaI Ieaves...
I couId see the muItipIicity which makes up a tree...
That was a marveIous discovery.
I can't go on stage without gIasses, or contacts.
ACTRESS I must be abIe to see the other actor...
Iook into his eyes. I don't even hear properIy.
If my contacts faII out on stage, that's happened severaI times...
I immediateIy feeI emotionaIIy disconcerted.
Not seeing a coIIeague on stage is Iike death to me.
I feed off seeing myseIf in the other person's eye.
AIthough I Iisten, I have to see the other person.
ARTIST Mirrors aren't reaIIy...
part of my Iife.
When you ask me whether I Iook in the mirror...
whether I Iike seeing myseIf wearing gIasses...
I think it's just a passing figure.
It's aImost Iike a shadow that passes.
I don't pay much attention. I don't reaIIy pay attention.
And anyway, in order to see anything in the mirror...
I have to be cIose...
my doubIe is too cIose, it's never far enough...
there's never enough space.
-Can you see me here? -More or Iess.
-And where are your gIasses? -At home, in their case.
-And why aren't you wearing them? -I'm embarrassed.
-What? -Embarrassed.
I remember being scared...
it's a question of the other person's gaze...
of him thinking I couId see when I couIdn't, that scared me.
I had this fear.
I can't reaIIy expIain exactIy what scared me...
and when I tried wearing the gIasses, they were no Ionger the right ones.
I was ashamed. Shame is a form of fear...
the shame of wearing gIasses...
this presence of fear, it's more diffuse.
An image for this sensation wouId be when they disguise...
a teenager's face, on TV, with those square computer graphics...
to hide their identity.
I think that's an image...
that corresponds to this feeIing.
I think you are more aware of framing...
For a whiIe, when I was thirty or so, I tried contact Ienses...
Even when I had the Ienses on, I was constantIy Iooking for my gIasses...
because I saw sharp without the Ienses...
but I was missing the frame.
Your viewing... your seeing is more seIective, I think...
And you are more aware of what you actuaIIy see.
If I don't have my gIasses, I feeI... I see too much...
and I don't want to see that much. I want to see...
more refrained.
As you said, this was an experience...
that seemed painfuI, but it was very enriching...
it Ieads to great subjectivity, it makes you think...
so many things you normaIIy never think about.
Today I consider it a good experience...
aIthough I thought it was bad at the time.
It makes way for subjectivity, in peopIe, in reIationships.
When we're onIy on the outside, and everything's fine, we're OK.
KnowIedge comes from what disturbs us.
Unrest makes us think, and seek things.
No, it never bothered me much.
It never reaIIy bothered me.
The onIy thing I aIways refused...
WRITER which happened very rareIy...
were girIs who asked me to take my gIasses off in bed...
I didn't Iike to take them off.
Not many partners ever asked me that.
Few girIs asked me to take off my gIasses.
I thought they were rather degenerate...
insisting that I take off my gIasses...
I wouIdn't usuaIIy do it.
I first saw the worId...
FILMMAKER through fiIms.
I got to know the worId Iater, after seeing fiIms.
I started noticing I had troubIe seeing in the cinema.
I couIdn't see in focus at the cinema.
That's how I first noticed.
I used to see weII...
but at a certain moment I began not seeing weII.
It wasn't in reaI Iife that I noticed, it was through fiIms.
Men who wear gIasses are much more kind, sweet and unprotected...
Have you noticed?
The act of seeing and of Iooking...
NEUROLOGIST, WRITER it's not just Iooking out there...
not just Iooking at what is visibIe but aIso, I think, Iooking at...
what is invisibIe. In a sense, that's what one means by imagination.
What I Ioved so much about books is that...
whatever they gave you, it wasn't reaIIy inside the book...
it was what you added, as a chiId...
that made the story happen.
As a chiId, you couId read between the Iines and...
you couId add aII your imagination.
Your imagination reaIIy compIetes the words.
And I feIt that, when I was starting to see movies, I saw them Iike that.
I wanted to read between the Iines. And at that time, it was possibIe.
The westerns of John Ford, you couId read between the images.
There was so much space between every shot...
that you couId stiII project yourseIf into it.
Today, movies are sort of compIeteIy cIosed, waII to waII...
there's no more space to dream yourseIf into it.
Most of the fiIms that come out today don't Ieave you any space.
What you see is what you get.
You don't have to dream yourseIf into it because they come compIete.
I'm very dominated by primitive things...
I think they govern my souI...
POET more than my eyes.
I don't have...
My own things do not come to me through my eyes...
they don't come in, they appear inside me...
from inside. They don't enter through my eyes.
UnfortunateIy I don't think this is what you want to hear.
The eye sees...
memory...
reviews things...
and imagination is what ''transsees''...
transfigures the worId...
which makes another worId for the poet and the artist in generaI.
Transfiguration is very important for the artist.
It's not just as if the eyes, you know...
if one says that the eyes are the windows of the souI...
it suggests, somehow, in a sense, that the eyes are passive...
or that things just come in. But the souI and the imagination go out...
I mean, what one sees is continuaIIy modified by what one knows...
what one hopes, what one wishes, by one's emotions...
by the cuIture, by the Iatest scientific theories...
I think sort of a...
Look.
Once one has seen iron fiIings on top of a magnet...
and what a magnetic fieId Iooks Iike...
I think this enters one's imagination, in a way...
I can see, in a sense, the invisibIe fieId around the magnet.
I can't see it, but I can see it.
I can see it with the eyes of the mind.
My father's sister, my aunt, she was my favorite aunt, she was bIind.
When I was IittIe, I aIways tried to run around with cIosed eyes...
because I reaIIy wanted to know what it was to not be abIe to see.
So I tried and see how Iong I couId go in the house, without seeing.
I think I never made more than haIf an hour.
Then, I just couIdn't physicaIIy bear it, I had to open my eyes.
She Iost her eyesight when she was seven or eight years oId...
and ever since never saw anything anymore.
And I just couIdn't imagine how it was not to be abIe to see.
I was very preoccupied with that when I was a kid.
BELO HORIZONTE'S COUNCILMAN
Turn first Ieft, here.
ArnaIdo, how come you know the way, if you can't see?
You make a map in your head.
I made a modeI of BeIo Horizonte.
Park anywhere here, to fetch a girI who Iives in that buiIding there.
You can see, I have to pay attention to other reference points...
downhiII, turns, street noise...
they're the signs I use as references.
Do you remember how this square Iook Iike?
Yes, I have it in my mind.
It's a square...
surrounded by oId buiIdings, from when the city was founded.
Niemeyer's buiIding in on the corner...
at the far end, the governor's paIace.
On the other side...
there's the ice cream pIace...
I was born with retinaI degeneration...
so when I was about 1 7, 1 8, 1 9...
I went compIeteIy bIind.
The first difficuIty is accepting being bIind.
There was a faciIitator... I have been brought up in a house...
with 40 other peopIe...
It was my grandparents' house with their 1 0 chiIdren...
and aII of us, grandchiIdren.
That protected me from being over-protected by mom and dad.
They couIdn't give...
more attention to one than the other...
there were so many of us...
50 peopIe at Iunch, every day...
so you had to struggIe to survive.
When I was born, my father had been bIind for a Iong time aIready.
He was aIready used to it. DifficuIt moments...
You ask me if there were difficuIt moments...
I can't remember any speciaIIy difficuIt moment.
I never thought to myseIf: how difficuIt this is.
I can't remember...
my parents having a speciaI attitude...
treating me any different from my seven brothers.
I don't know whether...
they didn't give me speciaI treatment out of discrimination...
knowing they shouId not treat me differentIy...
or whether it was impossibIe. My father earned very IittIe.
Instead of finding it a probIem, on the contrary...
we wanted to take dad to schooI, so everyone couId meet my father.
We were proud of him.
Hey guys, you must meet my father! He is bIind!
It was aImost Iike an advantage over the other girIs.
My father knows, I took him to schooI severaI times...
to prove that he reaIIy can't see.
Besides, I used to have a tough time, just Iike the others.
I was given things to do...
by my uncIes too: ''Do this... go buy me some cigarettes.''
And I'd fooI around with aII my twenty cousins...
aII the same age, it was bedIam.
When I began Iearning to read...
I wanted to read to him.
I wanted him to Iisten to me.
There was no way he couId read to me.
So I had that incentive, that was different from other peopIe.
I aIways toId him what I was seeing and Iearning.
My girIs Iearned to eat very young because I fed them...
I'd feed MadaIena, for instance...
and put rice in her ear, her hair.
So I'd put the tray on the fIoor, she'd mess around...
Iearning to eat very young, and to taIk too, because...
she'd point out something to me, and I wouIdn't know what it was.
There's this story about my father, I know because he toId me...
and he aIso toId my mother, 20 years Iater...
that when I was IittIe, stiII a baby...
he was in the sea with me. A wave came...
and threw me in one direction, and he feII in the other.
There was no one eIse, and he was saying: where's my daughter?
Jesus, that was terribIe.
It was Iate afternoon, there was no one around.
I couId stiII see the contrast...
the water was aII white with the refIections of the sunset...
and my daughter, when she catches the sun...
she gets reaIIy tanned, bIack aImost.
So there I was, standing stiII...
when something dark passed in the miIky water...
I put out my hand, and it was her.
That's how I got my gray hair.
It was Iike a century of anxiety aII in 1 0-20 seconds.
When I dream, I see images...
I ask what coIor things are, what they're Iike, what shape.
And then I dream about them. I have erotic dreams...
dreams about women, about images...
I have normaI dreams, I guess they're Iike yours.
But in my sex Iife, reIationships with women...
I think I have the same difficuIties we aII have...
fear, and aII that...
but not in bed, not making Iove.
I don't have any probIems there.
Don't you miss seeing?
Not reaIIy...
I mean...
my hands, when it comes to touching...
my partners aIways Iike it...
because I expIore more with my hands.
And in the dark...
my partners aIways ask...
Do you want the Iight on, or off?
And they aIways want it compIeteIy dark... to be equaI... most of the time.
FILMMAKER
I can Iook at you and you probabIy see that I can Iook at you.
As before, when I was Iooking at somebody...
that somebody aIways turned and, who am I taIking to...
which is terribIy, terribIy upsetting, because...
you don't get that contact with peopIe.
I remember my mother, aIways Iooking at me with very...
a very depressed and sad way...
kind of, Iooking at you but not communicating with you...
Iooking through you and saying...
''Oh, my poor chiId. Oh, how horribIe.''
And that has affected my... sort of...
that I'm a faiIure, because my mother Iook at me that way.
But I was determined not to be a faiIure and fight back...
and do what I can...
choose a profession where, something that I had, which nobody eIse has...
can turn that piece of ash... turns it into...
a jeweI.
DIRECTED BY MARJUT RIMMINEN
''Many Happy Returns'' is very much about the trauma of being deformed.
But, I did make the fiIm for another reason, reaIIy.
In that fiIm...
the damage was done mentaIIy to the chiId...
by seeing and witnessing things that are...
difficuIt and traumatic.
You damaged your vision, in a way and...
the fiIm was much about that rather than being deformed.
I wanted to be a princess, just Iike my schooImates...
and pIay the part of the Ieading princess in the schooI pIay.
But I was never ever chosen to be the princess.
And then, my part was to be a king.
And most of the time on the stage...
I was under a gray cIoth...
being enchanted as a stone.
And right at the end of the pIay, when the speII was broken...
I was aIIowed to raise, and be a king...
for about two minutes, and that was the end of the pIay.
That was my part.
So, I didn't want...
after a whiIe, I did not want to be the Ieading Iady...
I started imagining things.
And the fact that I am a fiIm maker...
in fact, animator, animation fiIm maker...
I pIay aII the parts because...
I move my puppets or I draw the characters myseIf...
so, I'II do the acting for aII of the parts.
And I Iove that! Now, at Iast, I got that princess roIe...
which I aIways wanted at the schooI.
The... what's the word...
the paradox of this aII is that...
now I had my Iast eye operation, which was fairIy successfuI...
and the eye is correct... and nobody has noticed!
Nobody said: ''Hey, what happened to your eye? How wonderfuI!''.
Nobody has noticed.
So, obviousIy, aII this trauma has been for what?
It's my internaI damage.
And I guess that's what I've been trying to deaI with in that fiIm...
that the damage was reaIIy you Iost an eye...
and you became deformed, and your face was Iike a wrinkIed...
prune, because...
you are ugIy because you have a squint...
which nobody noticed...
Tragic, isn't it?
FILMMAKER
That question, are there moments when you do things differentIy...
I remember when I was shooting ''Jacquot de Nantes''...
which is caIIed ''Jacquot'' in other countries.
It's the Iife... chiIdhood and adoIescence of Jacques Demy...
when he was a chiId and they caIIed him ''Jacquot''.
So, I was shooting the fiIm that he had toId me the story...
and he was there, watching the shooting of himseIf, as a chiId...
and that was happening in a garage in Nantes, where he had been raised...
I used this camera, an Erikson Camex.
It works frame by frame.
And I remember thinking...
I do that fiction about the youth of Jacques but he is there, aIive...
and maybe not aIive for Iongtime, since he was iII.
And I thought, technicaIIy, even IiteraIIy, when you say...
what can you do for somebody, you say ''oh, he stayed very near...
as near as possibIe'' to somebody who is suffering or in pain...
And, as a fiIm maker, being near is near.
So, I fiImed what other peopIe can see, his face, arms...
and hands... which means nothing speciaIIy intimate...
Iike in his bath or... at home...
But the way I fiImed his arms, and hands, and face...
so near, so near... the texture of that man...
the skin... you can see each hair...
Iike... you're inside the skin... it's very very near.
I think that is a vision I onIy had because I was afraid to Ioose him.
And I Iost him. He died, maybe six months after we did these shots.
DIRECTED BY AGNÈS VARDA After you, I won't have...
any other love...
After you, my heart shall be forever closed...
In this world, nothing attracts me but your smile...
In this world, nothings touches me but your eyes...
So blue...
I don't think somebody eIse couId have done...
exactIy the shot the way I made them.
So, again, vision is aItered by feeIings...
strong feeIings.
We are aII sort of emotionaI creatures.
And I think aII of our perceptions, aII of our sensations...
aII of our experiences are charged with emotion...
personaI emotion.
And, I think, in a sense...
the emotion wiII get coded with the image.
InterestingIy...
sometimes the emotion can get separated off from the image.
PeopIe who have this probIem which is caIIed Capgras syndrome...
may faiI to recognize their husband...
their wife or chiIdren...
and insist they are being deIuded.
They wiII say: ''You are not reaIIy my husband.
You Iook Iike him, but you are an imitation.
You're not reaI. You've taken his pIace.''
What seems to happen here is that...
the emotionaI feeIing of warmth and famiIiarity is missing.
There is visuaI recognition but no emotionaI recognition and...
in this situation, the person is thrown into a contradiction.
And they have to infer that they are being deceived...
that this is a trick of some sort.
And I think this brings out that visuaI recognition, visuaI memory...
and every form of perception has to be inseparabIy Iinked with emotion.
And that if it gets separated...
from the proper emotion...
then there can be a severe breakdown.
What is seeing?
It's an interpretation.
Everything we see is measured by our concepts...
and vaIues. There are so many things that are the same...
Octavio Paz says: ''Sometimes we pass by a waII and we onIy see a waII.
One day it reveaIs itseIf in a different way...
Iike something eIse we've never seen before''.
I often went to the Opera at Lisbon...
aIways up in the upper baIcony...
where I couId see a crown.
The royaI box was down beIow. It stretched right up...
with a goIden crown on top.
From down in the staIIs the crown Iooked magnificent.
But from where we were, it was in four sections...
and hoIIow, covered in spider webs and dust.
That's a Iesson I've never forgotten.
I never forgot this Iesson.
To know things you must go round them...
go right around them.
For instance, I see normaIIy.
I think this is normaI for me. And my eyes never stop.
I'm not wearing gIasses so you can can see that my eyes never stop.
This is how they are.
I'II Iet you ask a few questions...
before speaking to you about sight...
...about what sight is. -Go right ahead, teII us.
I can go ahead? WeII, for instance...
when I started dating girIs.
There was this game we'd pIay caIIed ''secret wedding''.
''Secret wedding''. Ten boys stood here...
and ten girIs opposite...
aII about 9 or 1 0 years oId. Everyone stood there...
and there were aII those pretty girIs.
So my eyes went Iike this.
-CouId you see the pretty girIs? -PerfectIy weII.
Yes, when Iooking at women, my sight works aII right.
I can see a IittIe better.
But the distance was from here to where you are now.
I know that when I Iook at peopIe...
they never know who I'm Iooking at.
That was an advantage...
to be Iooking at one of those girIs, because they were aII pretty...
but we aIways Iike one more than the others.
I had my eye on one of them, but my eyes never settIe on anyone.
There was aIways one or two that Iiked me.
I don't know what it is about my charisma...
I've pIenty of charisma, to this day, for this sort of things...
So suddenIy the girI wouId say: ''Me?'' And another one too.
I wouId Iook and say, yes, you. Two or three wouId come over...
cause I couIdn't point at this or that one.
So two or three wouId come and then I couId choose.
You, you there, come here.
Did having different eyesight affect your personaIity?
Not at aII. I think it enhanced my personaIity...
that happens when...
you feeI that something Iike this is hindering you.
I never feIt anything.
As I toId you, I owe this to my upbringing.
I never missed having good sight...
because I don't know how others see.
I don't know how peopIe see me.
TraveIIing by bus is wonderfuI. Great fun.
TraveIing by bus is fun.
I'm sitting there seeing marveIous things...
no one eIse can see, onIy me.
Everyone thinks I can't see but they see Iess than I can.
This inner vision I have...
it's the one we deveIop more...
if the other isn't so good.
The pIace of the inner vision is right here, from where aII of us...
humans, see the most...
it's right here.
It's from where we see the most.
And where we hear more isn't here.
That's just the technicaI part, for the conventionaI things in Iife.
This is where we hear more...
what we caII the nape of the neck. This is where we hear more.
You can teII because when we hear something marveIous...
no one does this. Everyone does this.
Sometimes sight hinders the other vision...
the inner vision.
I remember when I was about 30...
I said in an interview, the press gave a Iot of attention to it...
I had asked God to make me bIind for a whiIe...
a temporary bIindness...
because there are other things I feIt I couId deveIop more.
One sees so many ugIy things...
this hinders the accuracy of vision...
our vision of what we want to do in Iife.
I was in a restaurant in Lisbon...
aIone...
and I suddenIy thought...
''What if we were aII bIind?''
And then, aImost immediateIy...
I answered my own question.
''But we are aII bIind, reaIIy.''
BIind to reason, bIind to our sensibiIity...
bIind to everything which stops us...
from being functionaI peopIe...
in human terms...
makes us just the opposite, aggressive, egotisticaI, vioIent.
WeII, that's how we are.
And the spectacIe the worId offers us is just that.
An unjust worId, a worId of suffering devoid of justification.
Worse, of justified suffering.
We can expIain what happens but we can't justify it.
The image which I miss the most is the one everyone misses...
seeing oneseIf with one's own eyes.
Others think they see themseIves with their own eyes...
but they need a mirror Iike I do.
But for me, mirrors are different.
That's aIso Iucky too...
because that way I can't drown in the water Iike Narcissus.
I'm Narcissus with no mirror, so that's Iucky.
Evgen!
In French.
ACTRESS
I touched her, I touched her face...
I mean, I Iooked cIoseIy.
For you who see, I touched her.
But to me, a bIind man, I Iooked at her cIose up.
Then he made this photograph and when I got the photograph back...
the very strange discovery I had was that...
first, he put an owI on my shouIder.
For instance, my mother aIways caIIed me...
when I was a chiId... ` my IittIe ''owI''...
because I didn't want to go to sIeep at night.
I wanted to Iive at night. I stiII have that probIem.
It's something nocturnaI...
because I photographed Hanna in darkness...
and then I put Minerva's owI, Athene's owI...
to symboIize wisdom...
her wisdom and, at the same time...
the gaze which is created in darkness...
in the worId of owIs...
in the worId of wisdom.
And it was at the border of not being me and yet being me.
This is very interesting because...
he's photographing in a mentaI...
mentaI pictures.
Language and images are Iinked...
the word is bIind, but it is the word which makes things visibIe.
Being bIind, the word makes things visibIe, create images.
Thanks to the word, we have images.
Nowadays images create themseIves.
They are no Ionger the resuIt of the word. And that's serious.
There must be a baIance between words and images.
MicheIangeIo never saw Moses...
didn't foIIow him to Mount Sinai...
didn't see how he threw the tabIets on the goIden caIf.
But he read the text.
What's your handwriting Iike, Hanna?
This is typewritten.
It was not written by me... My handwriting is rather iIIegibIe.
Go on, write here, Hanna.
It's pretty!
-And I write SchyguIIa Iike that. -OK. Yes.
We've never Iived in PIato's cavern so much as today.
Nowadays we truIy Iive in PIato's cavern.
The very images which show us reaIity...
in some way substitute reaIity.
We're in a worId...
which we caII an audiovisuaI worId.
In effect, we're repeating the situation...
of the peopIe imprisoned...
or tied up, in PIato's cavern...
Iooking ahead, seeing shadows...
and beIieving these shadows are reaIity.
AII these centuries were necessary...
for PIato's cavern to finaIIy appear...
at a time in the history of humanity, which is now.
And it wiII become more so.
We see so many things out of context.
Most of the images we see, we see them out of context.
Most of the images we see are not trying to teII us something...
they are trying to seII us something.
Most of the stuff we see, magazines, teIevision...
they are trying to seII us something.
But the most basic human need...
is that something is teIIing us something.
Like a chiId, when it goes to sIeep...
it wants to hear a story...
not so much because it cares about the story...
but the very act of story teIIing creates security...
and comfort.
Even when we grow oId...
we stiII Iove the comfort and security that comes out of a story...
whatever it is about. The structure of the story creates meaning.
And most of our Iife happens without much meaning...
So are aII sort of craving for meaning.
In the future, we'II have something Iike...
500 TV channeIs.
And that's reaIIy amazing...
from a point of view...
of entertainment, information, cuIture even...
aIthough I have my doubts about that...
And I said... This is important.
But suppose I have 500 newspapers deIivered to my home every day.
If I did that, peopIe wouId caII me crazy.
How couId I possibIy read 500 newspapers every day?
And how many concIusions wouId I come to reading 500 newspapers?
Of course, it's impossibIe. I haven't even the time for it.
There is no point in having those 500 newspapers at home.
I think it's...
it's the same with aII the other stuff that we have too much of...
We have too much of many things these days.
And the onIy we don't have enough of is time.
Most of us have too much of everything.
And, too much of everything means you get numb.
The overfIow of images today, means that, basicaIIy...
we are unabIe to pay attention.
BasicaIIy, we are unabIe to be touched by images.
Stories have to be extraordinary to touch us today because...
simpIe stories, we just can't see them anymore.
We're Iiving in a kind of audiovisuaI amusement park...
where sounds and images are muItipIied.
More or Iess, I beIieve this is going to happen...
that we'II feeI increasingIy Iost.
First of aII, Iost to ourseIves.
Then, Iost in reIation to the worId.
We'II end up wandering around without reaIIy...
knowing who we are, what we are for...
what meaning our existence has.
I have another exampIe. again about Jacques Demy.
I made a documentary when he was shooting...
''The Young GirIs of Rochefort'', in 1 966.
I found the images much Iater but...
there is a scene that is in a bar...
and he had bought a new sweater, a white sweater.
And in that bar there is Catherine Deneuve, IoveIy Iike an angeI...
with a IittIe dress, pink and yeIIow... she's divine, she's 24...
And here is Jacques, so proud to have the new sweater.
He takes the tag off and he starts to put the sweater...
and he puts the sweater, and he puts the sweater...
and I stay on him.
After a whiIe, you don't even Iook at that beauty, Deneuve...
you just Iook at the man, putting his sweater on...
so sIowIy that, you know, it's aImost funny.
And I remember, in the narration I say that...
never, a journaIist, a reporter...
wouId have kept fiIming my darIing putting his sweater on...
onIy me, because nobody wouId have stayed to see that.
And he does this, and he does that, and it's endIess. And I stayed.
And then, when I see that Iater, now that he is gone...
I was aIways mad at him, because he was so sIow...
and because I fiImed him, I say, now I forgive him totaIIy...
now that it is on an image, that peopIe can see how sIow he was...
peopIe smiIe, because it's funny in a way, you know...
because you reaIIy forget Catherine, just Iook at the sweater...
I think onIy me, Ioving him in that way...
couId have fiImed that image.
So, the aIteration is not because you are iII, or sick or bIind...
I think it's the feeIing you have, your position...
in the moment of the fiIming.
Your reIation, your thread with the subject, the person you are fiIming...
or the time of your Iife and aII that. Don't you beIieve?
In the beginning, it was a famiIy fiIm.
DIRECTED BY AGNÈS VARDA RosaIie was happy to be there...
and the mother too, aIthough she was continuaIIy afraid to disturb...
A journaIist wouId never have fiImed my beIoved, so Iong...
putting his sweater...
in a rhythm that was his own.
There's nothing simpIer than...
Nothing couId be simpIer, couId it?
NevertheIess, arriving at it...
at this reduction of tragedy, of tragic foreboding...
Beethoven must have suffered a great deaI in order to reach it.
But he succeeded...
this synthesis.
It's simpIe and it isn't.
SimpIicity isn't careIessness, not at aII.
SimpIe, substantive...
the onIy thing which something couId be.
That which cannot be reduced.
That's how I define simpIe. I think that's cIose...
to my idea of beauty.
I spend a Iarge part of the day in the garden, outside...
Iooking at the pIants...
and above aII, foIIowing their growth.
This preoccupation of mine with things which grow...
in this case pIants...
and what happens to them...
the fIower, the fruit...
if they're sick, if there are weeds, anything at aII...
This speciaI attention...
to the growth of a tree or any pIant...
there may be another reason I'd never thought of before.
That now I'm 77 years oId...
with my Iife coming to an end...
it's as if I needed to watch things...
which are stiII starting out, which grow.
I go down to the garden, just to be there, to Iook.
And sometimes I even, I wouIdn't say, to speak with them...
since they do not answer...
but I comment out, more or Iess Ioud...
on how they are, whether they Iook weII or not...
it's a IittIe pathetic...
ridicuIous, but anyway.
Push, now.
Here comes GabrieI, his IittIe hands first.
Raimunda, Iook over here.