Q&A WITH THIERRY DE PERETTI

Q. Your film emphasizes the images of masked men associated with revolution and war in Corsica and Yugoslavia, respectively. Can you speak to the impact of these images on you when you were growing up and how they have influenced your cinematic practice?

A. The clandestine press conference sequences that take place in Corsica and that we see in the film correspond to the atmosphere of tension and political violence on the island in those years. There were kidnappings, hundreds of attacks every year, numerous murders, a climate of permanent threat. It was very oppressive. There’s no doubt this emotion, this reality that merged with my childhood nightmares, sometimes runs through my work. It’s obvious in this film.

These conferences featuring an underground army speak of the night and the illicit struggle. In À son image, there are two: the first is staged for the film, and more or less corresponds to those seen in the late ’80s or early ’90s, and the second is an archive sequence from the mid-’90s, more reptilian and paramilitary: creepy. These are propaganda images, intended for the press and television. For me, they also evoke a cinematic imagination—Franju’s films come to mind, for example.

These FLNC [National Liberation Front of Corsica] conferences vary throughout the ages, and the differences are fascinating to observe. They’re not the same from one decade to the next. The clothes are not the same, nor the weapons, the staging is different, but above all it’s the bodies that change. This is what we see in the film. We move from the almost peasant-like conferences of the ’80s, with their young, sharp bodies, to those of the ’90s, where the underground soldiers seem intent on imposing themselves through numbers, fear and a kind of fascist aesthetic.

Q. You use freeze-frames throughout À son image that correspond with the narrative’s focus on photography. How did you decide on what moments to isolate with this tool?

A. There are several types of freeze-frames in the film. The first are real screenshots, intended to take the breath away a little by creating a break in the flow of images, giving the impression that it’s an error or a problem that occurs at the moment of projection. It’s a rather rudimentary effect, but I find it effective. These breaks are connected to the character of Antonia, who is herself short of breath at this point due to the disappointment of being so little “seen” by Pascal’s character.

The second sequence, that of the double murder in Ajaccio prison, constructed somewhat like a photo-novel, is made up of photographs. In constructing it, we were of course thinking of Chris Marker’s La Jetée, but also of Eliane Delatour’s beautiful documentary on the Santé prison, entitled Si bleu, si calme.

There are also portraits, taken on the web, of militants Guy Orsoni and Robert Sozzi, who look at us (or rather, at the lens). These two young nationalist activists were murdered in the years covered by the film. They are anonymous. They are used in the film in the same way that photos are sometimes used on tombstones. But since both are looking at us, this reinforces their accusatory dimension.

And finally, at the very end of the film, there are a few photos of Antonia, some of them taken (notably the self-portrait) by Clara-Maria Laredo, who plays the character. They are archives of the film itself. An archive where the viewer could see the sources, because these are the moments in the film when these images were made. The viewer himself was there.

Q. You have spoken about how you are interested in memory, but not nostalgia. It’s clear to me that you do not long for the time-period depicted in the film, but what keeps drawing you back to this moment in recent Corsican history?

A. It seemed to me an intolerable omission that fictional cinema had so far done nothing formally about these moments in the island’s contemporary history, so dramatic that it hadn’t given its own version of them. All the more so as it’s a moment in Corsican political history that has been constantly instrumentalized, mythologized and “lied about” over the years.

The ’80s correspond to my childhood, and the ’90s to when I was a young man. The ’90s are more compelling for me, because many young people of my generation suffered the full force of the violence of those years. I wish I’d been able to tell the story or film it as it was happening. But I didn’t. I was doing something else at the time. Making films today fixes that a little and allows me to go back in time.

Q. What time of day (or night) do you most enjoy shooting?

A. Anytime, except early morning.

Q. Have you ever been influenced by a filmmaker or artist in a way that surprised you?

A. I feel culturally close to certain Italian artists and filmmakers of the second half of the 20th century. Yet I wouldn’t dare say they influence my work. But sometimes, when I find or feel that a scene I’ve shot reminds me of them, it surprises and touches me. It sounds very presumptuous, but certain artists from the Arte Povera movement. Italian filmmakers like Nanni Moretti, Valerio Zurlini, Gianfranco De Bosio lately, or texts by the Sicilian novelist Leonardo Sciascia.

Q. What have you been listening to lately?

A. The Lot Radio, almost every night.

Q. Who is a new filmmaker whose work you admire?

A. There are several young filmmakers I had the good fortune to meet at ECAL and Fémis, film schools in Paris and Lausanne, where I was a guest lecturer on several occasions, and whose strong early work I was able to admire. Among them, Maria-Luiza Vaz, Camille Anker, Megan Bruegger, Rose Hirgorom, Jordan Brandao Rodrigues, Wissam Bentikouk.

But new cinema doesn’t necessarily mean young filmmakers. I watch and look forward to every film by Eduardo Williams, Alice Diop, Kevin Jerome Everson, Bi Gan, Mati Diop, Jonás Trueba, Ted Fendt, Patrick Wang.

Q. What image would you like to end this interview with?

A. One from Stand by Me (1986) by Rob Reiner.