prⅳate cinema season finale, saturday 5:30 pm + sunday 5:30 pm: out 1

prⅳate cinema berlin sebastian at rolux.org
Thu Nov 26 12:30:05 UTC 2015


Out 1, usually dismissed as unwatchable, has remained hardly more than a rumor. 
Fittingly, the New York Times labled it the "cinephile's holy grail", "a true 
phantom film whose reputation rests on its unattainability", the Guardian 
called it the "hardcore cinephile's Bigfoot", only to add that "part of the 
film's appeal lies is being able to boast that you've seen it", and since Out 1 
hasn't been screened more than once or twice every decade, nobody seems to have 
realized that it is not yet another long and boring Rivette film, in fact not 
even a film at all, but nothing less than the Great Lost French Post May 68 TV 
Series. It is undoubtedly odd that it has taken almost half a century -- and 
the recent renaissance of the television series, outside its original medium, 
as the cinematic long-form equivalent of the novel -- until it has become 
possible to least acknowledge the very genre of this mysterious film object 
(given that it was commissioned and subsequently rejected by French television, 
given that its structure is classically episodic, and given that each episode 
even begins with a set of black and white stills that recapitulates key moments 
of the previous one) ... but finally, here we are. And now that binge watching 
has become both technologically feasible and socially acceptable, Jacques 
Rivette's and Suzanne Schiffman's work may actually have a bright future.

Yes, it's true that Out 1 opens with an almost uncut theater improvisation 
scene that takes fifty minutes to develop from yoga into orgy. Yes, it's true 
that Out 1 has zero plot until the beginning of episode three, only exposition, 
and that what follows doesn't follow any script. Yes, it's true that Out 1 is a 
political action thriller that is void of any action until around episode five. 
And yes, it's called "Out" because Rivette hated everything that was "in", a 
term that had become very much en vogue in France at the time, it's called "Out 
1" because he thought he might do even more of it, and it's called "Out 1: noli 
me tangere" because he wanted to make sure that no-one would ever dare to touch 
the final version, which has a runtime of twelve and a half hours. (Actually, 
that's exactly what he tried to do himself in 1974, but the four-hour "Out 1: 
Spectre" is in fact just yet another long and boring Rivette film.) However, 
once you've gotten a hang of the series' modus operandi, Out 1 will reveal 
itself as the unforeseen culmination and subsequent psychedelic capsizing of an 
entire generation of French political cinema, including what feels a full 
remake of Godard's "Deux ou trois choses que je sais d'elle" (with half of "La 
chinoise" thrown in for good measure), complete with mad traffic noise and a 
new palette of primary colors, featuring Jean-Pierre Léaud as a mute-deaf 
beggar with harmonica and Juliet Berto as a small-time hustler and con-artist, 
both drifting through the cafés of Paris, constantly looking for new victims.

The plot itself is actually quite simple: While two underground theater groups 
are rehearsing two Greek tragedies, "Prometheus Bound" and "Seven Against 
Thebes" by Aeschylus, Léaud and Berto independently begin to discover a 
conspiracy based on Balzac's trilogy "The History of the Thirteen", until 
Leaud's findings lead him to a strange thrift store named "L'angle du hazard", 
from where on it becomes increasingly clear that the two theater troupes are 
one and the same, and that the sleeper cell of the Thirteen is about to wake 
up. There's no danger of spoiling the ending though: the resolution of the plot 
will be its gradual dissolution, and just like the two groups at its center, 
the story itself will eventually just spiral out of control. The last two 
episodes feel like diving down the deep and dark plot holes of a psychedelic, 
poststructuralist precursor to the (still decidedly structuralist) second 
season of Twin Peaks, approximately at the point where the dialogue begins to 
be played backwards. But while the series may deliberately lose its sense of 
direction, it never loses the energy that drives it forward, and its approach 
to form and dynamics recalls the structure of something like a Doors song, in 
this case a twelve and a half hour version of "The End" that just doesn't want 
to end. (The notes from our last viewing suggest that it could also be a 
Spacemen 3 song, most likely a twelve and a half hour version of "Revolution" 
that doesn't want to end either.) Of course we weren't there, but Claire Denis 
spent a day on the set and said the whole thing reminded her of an acid trip.

Obviously, the series is set in the aftermath of May 68 in Paris. The walls are 
still covered with graffiti, everyday life is still entirely political, the 
main characters are not individuals, but collectives, and Out 1 captures the 
moment just before these communes begin to drift into isolation, confusion and 
paranoia. This is clearly the moment when Godard made "Tout va bien" and "Ici 
et ailleurs", the onset of political depression, even though Out 1 remains more 
"ici" than "ailleurs", except for a small number of scenes that hint at the 
existence of an outside world. And this is clearly the moment when Deleuze and 
Guattari wrote the "Anti-Oedipe", it's evident that both Marx and Freud will 
have to be turned upside down to remain useful for revolutionary politics, and 
the settings and tropes of Out 1 suggest that Rivette fully anticipated, if not 
already articulated, the coming program of schizo-politics. Admittedly, at 
first it may seem as if someone didn't get the memo: in Out 1, not only the 
subconscious is structured like a theater (and not like a factory, as Deleuze 
and Guattari would soon point out), but in fact most of conscious life is 
taking place in an actual theater, literally rehearsing Oedipus. Still, once 
the function of the theater has become clearer -- the utopian place within the 
existing order of the social that allows for play and transformation -- one 
can, if one is so inclined, make out the lines of flight, the interlocked 
processes of deterritorialization and reterritorialization, hints at the "Body 
without Organs", examples of "becoming", and a fair share of its very opposite.

Of course, it is not our intention to advertise Out 1 as a two-day introductory 
course to "Capitalism and Schizophrenia", even if it may be the most overtly 
Deleuzian television series ever conceived. But that's not the full story. It's 
a series about revolution in which hardly anyone ever talks about politics. 
It's a series about terrorism without any trace of government or police. It's a 
series about society that is void of love stories, families or domestic drama. 
It's a series about madness where madness is never personal. It's a series 
about bodies that works with astonishingly little nudity. And it's a series 
about colors most of which we haven't even mentioned yet, like the fullscreen 
red and green of the cafés and bars, the bright pink and orange of the thrift 
store, or the very 16 mm blue and yellow of the beach where, for reasons beyond 
our immediate understanding, half of the cast ends up in the final episode. At 
the same time, it's a series about cinema that is more "Cicatrice interieure" 
than Garrel's and even less "Un film comme les autres" than the piece that 
Godard used this title for. It's not an oedipal hippie drama, even if it may 
invite you to mistake it for one, and we can say with certainty that it's not 
too long. In short, Out 1 is what television could have been in the 1970s, but 
instead, it has suffered several decades of censorship at the hands of clueless 
producers, incompetent distributors and misguided cinephiles who prefer true 
masterpieces of cinema to be rare, lost, or otherwise unaccessible. So if we 
can make at least a small contribution to putting an end to this misery, then 
we're actually rather confident that we're not wasting our time this weekend.

Needless to say, while this an invitation to watch the entire series with us, 
you're also very much welcome to just visit Prⅳate Cinema for a drink or two.
It's also is our last screening this season. Thanks for coming, and more soon.

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                                                   prⅳate cinema season 4 finale

                                                         out 1 (noli me tangere)
                                             jacques rivette & suzanne schiffman
                                                              1971 742 min 12 gb
                                                   https://0xdb.org/0246135/info

                                                    saturday november 28 5:30 pm

                                                       6 pm E01 De Lili à Thomas
                                              7:30 pm E02 De Thomas à Frédérique
                                               9:15 pm E03 De Frédérique à Sarah
                                                      11 pm E04 De Sarah à Colin

                                                      sunday november 29 5:30 pm

                                                     6 pm E05 De Colin à Pauline
                                                 7:30 pm E06 De Pauline à Emilie
                                                       9 pm E07 D'Emilie à Lucie
                                                   10:30 pm E08 De Lucie à Marie

                                                            prⅳate cinema berlin
                                           
                                                                u kottbusser tor
                                                                  12 seats, rsvp
                                                          first come first serve
                                                       location in separate mail

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prⅳate cinema berlin
www.piratecinema.org



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