notes on training for Play theme of Cinema Cent Ans de Jeunesse

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Cinema Cent Ans De Jeunesse – Le Jeu
Training Session 01
22-09-16
Introduction
Welcome all to this the 22nd issue of the project.
This gentleman from the Cinematheque Joint - director welcomes us.
A special welcome to those who are joining us for the first time, especially those from India.
He quotes an American writer to say about the best thing to fight terrorism is to go to France and drink
red wine and eat good garlicy food.
He talks about forthcoming events here in the Cinematheque.
Nathalie announces the new groups joining us.
India, and Lyon & Sophia.
This afternoon Alain B will outline the project around ‘play’.
This afternoon we’ll move over to the Lotte Eisner space.
We’ll also look at the website.
We also have 3 years on line from the past.
We’ll talk about the team and the planning for the year.
Team is made up of Katia - practical matters, Isabelle - teaching matters, Anthony - technical matters &
Nicola the projectionist.
It’s vital to start your journey through the subject this year with this training.

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We’ll also talk about the blog.
The DVD extracts too. Should be with you by the end of October.
The extracts are up there on Vimeo for you to get started with.
There’s Paulo’s film from Carlitos School in Sao Paulo, his film is about 20 years of the project.
It outlines what happens in the their delivery of the project.
After that. Tomorrow we’ll have our famous group photo. Welcome to new friends..
Thanks for keeping this project full of life and activity.
Over to you Alain.
Alain’s Intro
Hiya pals.
Here’s a shot from Kiarostami which is very important to us. We’ve used his work since the start of the
project.
He doesn’t have a teaching approach, but a sympathetic approach to how we approach the project.
He asks himself how his work can inform our pedagogy.
How it influences our work. How it can inform our work.
So how do we approach the teaching of cinema - not to rest too far in to teaching philosophy.
This subject is huge.

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I came to it very indirectly.
I was working on the notion of Islands in cinema.
Pierrot Le Fou -
He had his own film examples - then others arrived last night. There’s so many to choose from.
He likes the impurity of this. It’s not refined, it’s open.
It’s open to interpretation unlike the Interval.
How does it serve us to look at this in cinema?
It’s a pure question of cinema but also of ritual, location and more.
I didn’t want to do a true typology - it doesn’t work with children.
We’re going to touch on certain elements - categories, but not a typology as such.
God we’ve got so many extracts. All different from each other. How in hell am I supposed to organise
them all? He says.
I need a week to digest all that you’ve sent in.
One example will cover certain aspects rather than two or more clips - but you’ll get them on the DVD
later in the year.
You can also add your own extracts to the project from your own cultural specificities.
Definition of Play
I’ll start by saying that we’re obliged to limit the term ‘play’ otherwise it’s too large.
It takes in everything.
So let’s limit it and eliminate certain things.
A theatre play for instance - is not ‘play’ in this sense, or a musical, or a dance show.
We’re looking at the play of childhood. Children’s play.

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So there are some things that just won’t be in the extracts.
When your children work on their films there may be elements where this is a touch vague.
All that is spectacular, we’ll talk about this.
The dream of play, that’s gone as is other things.
I’ll start by looking at the choice I’ve made.
The difference between game and play:
Games are play regulated by strict laws which define the notion of play.
They dominate it. There are rules that have to be respected.
Play and Playing - playing is a movement, an activity in the process of happening - a physical thing.
The moment of play, the process of play.
More than in a choice.
It’s an instantaneous spontaneous response.
Paranoia
Two clips which play around the idea of PARANOIA - a major theme in this.
The Most Dangerous Game -
Drowned people who arrive on an island.
You’ve got two hours - I’m going to hunt you down and kill you.
Also Battle Royale.
Children alone on an island.
The last to die is the one who wins.

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Paranoid Play
Chasses de compte
Trowbridge
Lord of the Flies
Hunger Games
Clip from Chasses du compte Zaroff - The Most Dangerous Game
I love their costumes, the whole synthetic look of the whole thing. I love it.
Clip from Battle Royale, which is much more violent.
It’s the explaining of the rules.
The rules and the response to the explaining of the rules. Really interesting.
Showing of the rules in operation. Setting out the game.
[Bluebell Cockleshell 1,2,3 - From Scotland with Love.]
Scottish Screen Archive - street games.
Being chosen to play the game - being the last to be selected - not being chosen, being chosen but you
don’t want to be.
It’s a game with very stricty riles.
It’s very Japanese he says.
Lets now talk about childhood play rather than playing of games.
A few theortical bases to work from:

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From the world of the theorists who explore the world of the mind - Donald Winnicott childhood
theorist.
He defined concepts of play. He worked on object relations theory.
Cultural experience starts with play. It’s that which leads to artistic expression. If in a childhood there’s
no experience of play there will be no expression of and appreciation of ‘art’.
If a child has had the misfortune not to have been able to play when they are little they are
incapacitated, handicapped by this. The notion of creation, the way to invent one’s own proper
life. Childhood play is the cornerstone.
How a child starts to distinguish itself from their mother - the development of the self. Play happens in
the space between them. It can be by way of an object - a transitional object - playing with a rattle.
The rattle attached to a thread above the cot and throwing it out.
They can play at this for ages, if it’s returned to them. This is an exploration of power, if the mother is
there it will be returned to them. But when they’re not, the rattle is gone. It’s over.
The mother is not there, it’s an agonising situation for the child. The absence causes distress.
An object which gives a child the illusion of ‘power’ of the development of language, a
communication. It’s fear and loss. It leads to language.
Ponette - the film - is like that where the mother is dead and the doll becomes her, Ponette replacing
her mother and the doll being herself.
Winnicott speaks of mothers who can’t play with their children and the effect that it has on them. This
causes all sorts of difficulties.
Unfortunately for Winnicott that’s over - it’s being revised these days…
It’s a perspective of his time.

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Negative Testimonies – Denial Of Access To Play
When Children can’t play / don’t play.
They’re removed from their childhood where they can’t play.
They don’t have the ability to play.
A beautiful film about this - where the world won’t let the child play - two of these films finish with
suicide.
Clip from Kiarostami - La Recreation - Break time
A wee boy is removed from his class. Thrown out of the class and he plays with a ball and breaks a
window.
“It’s ma ball and I’m no playin’”
And the stolen object which doesn’t allow others to play.
Justice and absolute injustice.
The object of desire is the ball.
He references the Bread and the Street.
To meet the unknown they need their little object to face it.
Bergala just restates what we’ve just seen.
The exclusion from the community of those playing.
How he works with sound - intimate foley and nothing else. Bringing it to the foreground.

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The two girls who watch from the outside - what are they about? How come you showed them that Mr
K?
It’s a significant thing.
Clip from - Germany Year Zero
Germany Year Zero and the inability to play. Play not being in any way possible. For a variety of
reasons, both personal and political.
Thea teacher who he likes and then the teacher makes a sexual advance on him and he flees. His
belief in his teacher is totally shattered. He takes to the street.
It’s exactly the same scenario as in the last film.
He wants to be part of the game but he’s too old.
How he reacts is interesting - to try and play alone.
Then, before a building, he goes in, it’s a wreck and he finds an object. Hammer. Which allows him to
play with it as a gun. The ruined house becomes part of his play, as he balances on this and that.
The journey of his play is fantastic.
And then he dies.
Hope and Glory - clip of going around the bombed out sites with the children
Game substitute echoes - apple core for ball
Death & Play.
The bits at the end where he plays with balance and -
Play allows us to be part of a cultural expression, to be togehtre and to be oneself.

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Alan says he was always the last to be chosen for football teams.
Weren’t we all. And look at us now.
Look at me Mummy, look, look – I’m dancing!
Children who reject. Being removed from a community.
He has nothing as his community is also gone by the war - it’s all destroyed.
Clip from Mouchette by Bresson
At a fun fair. Where...there’s… no… fun....
Life is but a bumper car race in which me must all crash.
This year’s theme is Nihilism.
Games of Height and Balance
Let’s look at games of height and balance and which throw the body off balance.
Another Clip from Mouchette by Bresson
The storm clip from Mouchette.
He’s mentioned cabin.
More suicide. The child’s dead mother. The body.
Really spot on for p7.
A Further Clip from Mouchette by Bresson

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The myth of Sisyphus. Endless repeating games. And then the end.
Thanks Alain.
The role of hospitals in play. Oh for goodness sake.
Clip from Mika’s Lukemia
Mika’s Lukemia - clip
The inverse of the end of The 400 blows.
The finality of this - despite her presentation.
Transitional Objects and Play
Play around the fantastic - by way of objects - transitional objects.
The capacity to place oneself in the shoes of another.
The development of this capacity to be the other.
The status of the transition object is a paradox, created by the baby, but it was already there. They
invest meaning in it.
When Edmund finds the object in Year Zero it’s nothing, it has no function, but he invests it with
meaning, transforming it in to the other.
That which is the object outside and real and then the interior change of it by the child’s play. How they
transform it.
How manafatured toys have a nominitive play value. A toy tractor is a toy tractor. But children invent
and play.

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Objects already programmed with a representative function tend not to be transfigured into something
else.
It comes from the child them self, their capacity to create. Is that not what a film is? He asks.
We transform the literal in to the figurative.
Goddard says I create from what I find.
The filmmaker like the playing child creates an intermediate space a free space between reality and
imagination.
Found objects.
The exchange between the mother and the child, .
The space of time. Space/time between the child and the mother, a bit of wood can become a
conductors baton (sort of). The gesture of creation.
There are certain films where the filmmaker writes the scenario and there’s very little play space in
them. They’re too closed for whatever reason, practical or other.
There’s no play in them. No space for play,
And then there’s others - which are pure play spaces for the filmmakers. Terry Gilliam!
Pierrot Le Fou is Alain’s example.
There are very few films where it’s all placed on the element of play - Pierrot is one. There are no
children - it’s adults playing.
Truffaut’s ‘Sunday’ film ?People on a sunday?
Has an element of such play in it.
A film which finishes on the photo of a wedding / crosses in to a parasol which falls and we see their
children / the feet of their children.

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Badlands also has two children who play. They kill anyone who gets in the way of their playing. The
father - boom.
When they get to the rich man’s house with the deaf maid. They go in like burglars, but it’s handed over
to them. They can play as they want in that house, play at being rich grown ups.
Forbidden Games - the sexual games of childhood.
Clip from Celine & Julie by Rivette.
His great pleasure is to play. Get his actors to play. Play, play, play!
Games of tig.
What’s the time Mr Wolf / grandmother’s footsteps.
The semiotics of play.
Alasdair’s commentary:
To my tastes this clip lacks justification - things are voluntarily left at places to serve the
narrative function, they’re not organically part of it, it’s forced from the outside hand of the
storyteller. It’s not justified.
Mark’s commentary:
I'm going to disagree Mr S - this is the first actually playful clip we've seen - where the film-
maker, actors/characters are playing, ie behaving without justification - or maybe in agreeing?
A: I agree, it’s definitely play in the terms of characterisation, but I need more. I need it to
be a more complete whole, where the characters serve and advance a story. The game of
acting isn’t enough, to my tastes.
M: Sure - but sometimes the evasion of narrative, and the purely playful form, is
refreshing. I think it’s what the Coen Bros do - they play with story form

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A: True.
People and Play
Two types of play.
1 on their own
2 with another / others
1 where the play involves an inanimate object - Castaway - a man and a ball that’s it.
The ‘doll’. Applying a character on to something that isn’t explicitly part of it.
Clip from Ponette
Where the doll is given life.
Punishment and reward.
The things you have to do in a game. Epruve - tests - things you have to pass. To do something.
That’s what Ponette plays with in this clip.
Clip from the Red Balloon.
Alain explains that the balloon is a bit disobedient.
I’ll let you go because I know you’ll come back.
Objects which become another

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The Gold Rush is a great example of this.
At last - Chaplin. All will be well.
The object isn’t passive - it reacts. It fights back.
Silent Comedy allows a return to childhood. A naive innocence.
The space needs to be cleared to make way for the ‘playing’. That’s very interesting. Clear the way -
I’m going to play for you.
Clip from L’Acrobate by Jean Danile Paulee.
His mop / broom becomes his dance partner.
Beautiful movement - very literal.
Literal transformative play.
Clip from Spirit of the Beehive
Shadow play with hands.
Hidden play - ‘Turn off the light!!! Dad’s coming!!!’
Clip from A Day at the Races - Marx Bros
The role of virtuosity in play. To be trully exceptional at something and to play aorund with the
delivery.
The virtuosity allows a moment of beauty to happen.
Wonderful!

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The wonderful shot on the hands which become transformed and completely other.
We’ll take a wee break for a moment or two.
------------------------
The Isolation of Play – Islands of Play
The closed circle of play.
You be the father, I’ll be the mother, that’s our baby etc.
It allows an exchange with the other.
Winnicotte says that it’s a consecrated space that allows an exchange / creative exchange.
The filmmaker enters in to this with their team.
Islands feature lots of games. They are circles closed off from the rest of the world, where the rules
are set in that closed system.
Clip from Sonatine by Takeshi Kitano
The contrast between the actual game and the game that they modify and play with.
It’s a mimetic game. They’re interpreting a movement.
Games where you hide something behind your back / sit on it to keep it hidden.
Clip from Visages d’Enfants
2 children, the mother is dead, the father has remarried, she has a daughter. The children face off
against each other. The new wife is not necessarily a bad person.
It’s about a couple standing against the world.

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On the island they’ve created a play zone.
We see the island clearly as an island.
It’s been filmed in Switzerland.
Pulling of the drawbridge.
Destroying what you seek to keep the other away from it. Playing a game where everyone looses.
He talks about the play space within the circle how it proposes its own rules.
Pierrot Le Fou - the chase sequence in the office, which is totally separate from the rest of the
world. It’s always night in there. It’s a secret / safe place.
Clip from Rebel without a Cause
In the swimming pool
“I wish we could stay here”
James Dean also has problems with his father in the film.
They play like children. It’s very naive.
Even if they are mostly adult in nature.
Clip from The Princess of France - Portugal
First of all we can see the play space as set out by the camera. It’s isolated by the geographical
location and also the lighting. Working with the music imposed over that isolated activity draws for the
viewer that we’re not in the same place, it makes it ‘other’.
How can we show that a play space is a different space?

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Moving swiftly on.
A playing space allows certain games, in cinema very much hide and seek.
Grandmother’s footsteps is a very cinematic game.
Then there’s the question of point of view.
From who’s pov are we seeing it?
Clip from Kikujiro - T Kitano
Kitano is a great filmmaker of play.
There are many types of play and games to look at.
Games of chance and hazard
Games of representation
Games of dizziness / vertigo
The 4 Types
Competition
Chance
Playing at / Simulation
Vertigo
Competition
Clip from Rebel Without A Cause.
The field of play is very clear in this example.
But yet we’re outside of the rules of the game.
They know the cops will come as the end was so grim, they’ll flee before the cops are there.

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The competition for her and not to be seen as chicken.
It’s highly regulated. And has to be respected.
Clip from Colour of Money
The aim is to win and to win money and then it switches.
We’re outside of normal rules and society here.
The game is double.
He wants to show off in front of his girlfriend too.
Constructed games like Roulette, are very different to this.
Here the game itself here is sinister.
In Casino.
Clip from Forest Gump
The moment when he discovers that he can play ping pong.
The pleasure of being at good at something against the odds.
It was done on computers.
He didn’t know how to play but his competitors were real players and got pissed off about playing
without balls.
Clips from Lumiere bros.
Game of Petanque
Sack Race
Real joy in the sack race.
It’s total chaos.
It’s wonderful.

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Clip from Aniki Bobo
The transgression of the rules of the game and the consequences thereof.
The game of love and rivalry which ends very badly indeed.
Yet it also falls in to the category of vertigo, too.
Clip from Les Vaccances de M. Hulot
The bit with the ping pong.
Imagined objects within game play - where the ball’s not there.