Journal of Film Preservation - FIAF
Journal of Film Preservation - FIAF
Journal of Film Preservation - FIAF
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La réforme hygiénique (mise à l’avant par la<br />
propagande française dans la période de<br />
l’entre-deux guerres), comme métaphore des<br />
bienfaits de la colonisation. À partir de<br />
quelques courts métrages didactiques<br />
mettant en garde contre les maladies<br />
vénériennes et vantant les vertus de la<br />
médecine moderne, l’auteur analyse la mise<br />
en place du discours colonialiste. Le discours<br />
hygiéniste et l’aventure coloniale font bon<br />
ménage. Les microbes invisibles et la<br />
géographie sont étroitement liés.<br />
this well-known Arab fable. French medical agency becomes not<br />
merely the sole cure for syphilis, but it is the only way that the<br />
fantasy <strong>of</strong> “A thousand and one nights” may live on as an imagined<br />
state.<br />
When Mohamed understands that the cold sore is no mere “bobo”<br />
and walks over to the village dispensary, the film becomes the hope<br />
that we may all return to a Rousseauesque state <strong>of</strong> nature,<br />
uninhibited by the paralysing effects <strong>of</strong> contagious diseases produced<br />
by “civilised life.” The arrival <strong>of</strong> French public health campaigns<br />
implies a modernist regenerative mythology. The appearance <strong>of</strong> the<br />
automobile, the screening <strong>of</strong> an educational film, and the<br />
incontrovertible authority <strong>of</strong> French medical expertise all contribute<br />
to the spectacle <strong>of</strong> modernity, which promises a form <strong>of</strong> spiritual and<br />
social renewal as the “restoration” <strong>of</strong> a simpler life.<br />
French interwar documentary cinema also established a vital link<br />
between microbiological agents and geographic landscapes. Popular<br />
demonstrations <strong>of</strong> the all-powerful microbe pioneered by the Pasteur<br />
Institute before the First World War contributed to an emerging<br />
visual culture <strong>of</strong> magnification and spectacle. These demonstrations<br />
became emblems <strong>of</strong> a scientific diagnosis beyond question, justifying<br />
a widening geographic theatre <strong>of</strong> curative action both in France and<br />
the colonies.<br />
Optics-<strong>of</strong>-scale<br />
In an even shorter short-subject film entitled Trypansoma Gambiense:<br />
Agent de la maladie du sommeil [Trypansoma Gambiense: The Agent <strong>of</strong><br />
Sleeping Sickness] (1924), produced by Pathé Consortium Cinéma, an<br />
optics-<strong>of</strong>-scale demonstrates the effects and causes <strong>of</strong> sleeping<br />
sickness. This four-minute film is composed <strong>of</strong> three basic levels <strong>of</strong><br />
magnification: it begins with a medium shot <strong>of</strong> an African “patient,”<br />
followed by an extreme close-up <strong>of</strong> the tsé-tsé fly, and concludes with<br />
a microcinematic illustration <strong>of</strong> sleeping sickness (also known as<br />
trypanosomiases) at the cellular level, where it has infected a sample<br />
<strong>of</strong> rat’s blood.<br />
Within these three levels <strong>of</strong> magnification, sleeping sickness is<br />
diagnosed as a set <strong>of</strong> typological associations. The opening shot<br />
establishes an African context for sleeping sickness. While nothing<br />
seems obviously wrong with an African man breathing heavily<br />
outside <strong>of</strong> a hut, the intertitle informs us that this man is afflicted<br />
with sleeping sickness. His medical condition is invisible, yet can be<br />
diagnosed and even magnified. Dangling on the end <strong>of</strong> a needle, the<br />
tsé-tsé fly is presented as a still image <strong>of</strong> glossina palpalis, a generic<br />
entomological specimen. The film cuts from this still <strong>of</strong> the dangling<br />
fly, to a motionless fly, superimposed on a white backdrop with its<br />
antennae, sensor, proboscis, and stinger labelled as part <strong>of</strong> an<br />
anatomical demonstration.<br />
The camera then moves into the cellular universe <strong>of</strong> the microscopic<br />
sample. At first, normal circular blood cells appear, but a further<br />
18 <strong>Journal</strong> <strong>of</strong> <strong>Film</strong> <strong>Preservation</strong> / 63 / 2001