I just came across this interview and can’t stop but make a link between our project and what Godard is talking about.

” It is quite striking, when workers are interviewed…these people are given 15 brief seconds, when they haven’t opened their mouths for years. We give them 15 seconds or 3 minutes to speak. ‘What do you think of the strike? what do you think of your lot in life?’ Who can answer when he’s had his mouth sewn shut? Who can answer?
…
A worker who buys a small camera or a still camera and films his/her vacation, is making a political film. That’s what I call a political film. That’s the only film he can make. It so happens that he’s allowed to film his vacation, but strangely enough that he’s not allowed to film his work. Cameras are forbidden in factories, in the workplace…..”

Godard also talks about the claim that a worker does not understand the films made about his life, so it is useless to make films about workers. He says that this is not about the intellectual level of this worker as it was always claimed, but a problematic about the inaccessible film language that is used, that it is about who owns and creates this language.

He links all these points to different issues as his main concern is the film language and film industry in those years(1972). For us these points are related to other issues and many discussions we are having in a PV project being made with the workers in 2011. Hope to expand on these in the coming posts..
belit