Journal of Film Preservation - FIAF
Journal of Film Preservation - FIAF
Journal of Film Preservation - FIAF
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(1) Mohamed ben Chegir with a syphilitic cold sore in Conte de<br />
la mille et une nuits [The story <strong>of</strong> a thousand and one nights],<br />
Jean Benoît-Lévy (1929). © Comité Français d’éducation pour<br />
la santé.<br />
(2) The arrival <strong>of</strong> the roulette d’hygiène [hygiene caravan] from<br />
the Office Nationale de l’hygiène sociale [National Social<br />
Hygiene Bureau] ibid<br />
(3) The screening <strong>of</strong> Les maladies vénériennes [Venereal<br />
Disease] ibid<br />
better-known feature documentary made on another Citroën<br />
expedition, La Traversée du Sahara en autochenilles [Crossing the Sahara<br />
in Half-Track vehicles] (1923). The half-track vehicle (a.k.a. caterpillartread<br />
vehicle), equipped with communications equipment and<br />
running water for campsites, appeared as an engineering marvel <strong>of</strong><br />
speed and geometric efficiency to interwar audiences. In films such<br />
as La Traversée du Sahara, La Croisière noire, and La Croisière jaune<br />
[The Yellow Journey] (1932), the movement <strong>of</strong> these half-tracks<br />
presents topological and geological formations analogous to<br />
that <strong>of</strong> a patient’s body under medical observation. Their<br />
movement across the Sahara in La Traversée du Sahara<br />
illustrates the contours <strong>of</strong> an assimilated French geographic<br />
body, and charts the historical itinerary <strong>of</strong> French involvement<br />
in Algeria. The continuous imprint <strong>of</strong> the half-track treads<br />
unifies a geographic surface while also demonstrating the<br />
accessibility <strong>of</strong> the colonies to metropolitan France. The<br />
presentation <strong>of</strong> La Traversée du Sahara and Le Continent<br />
mystérieux marked the beginning <strong>of</strong> a popularised feature<br />
documentary cinema about the French colonial presence in<br />
Africa for French metropolitan audiences.<br />
Educational cinema <strong>of</strong> the interwar period was a pastiche <strong>of</strong><br />
public health initiatives that came to depend on an emerging<br />
spatial aesthetics, analogous to the layered quality <strong>of</strong> Pathé’s<br />
Trypansoma Gambiense. National and regional film-lending<br />
institutions supported the integration <strong>of</strong> cinema into the<br />
public education system as well as public health and<br />
agricultural assistance campaigns. The flourishing <strong>of</strong> the<br />
educational cinema movement in France led to the creation <strong>of</strong><br />
a series <strong>of</strong> interdependent educational film-lending libraries,<br />
which used variations <strong>of</strong> the same short-subject films.<br />
Witnesses the “the geometric and mechanical splendour <strong>of</strong><br />
mechanical destruction” during the First World War now<br />
became spectators to an emerging hygienic spectacle staged in<br />
a microscopic and geographic theatre <strong>of</strong> action. As the spectre<br />
<strong>of</strong> vast mechanical destruction lies beyond the scope <strong>of</strong><br />
individual casualties, the microbiological realm defines a<br />
world beyond the mental and physical state <strong>of</strong> the patient.<br />
From a patient’s body to a microscopic sample or a geographic<br />
landscape, curative agency is precisely the capacity to<br />
penetrate the body, to see beyond the limitations <strong>of</strong> human<br />
sight, to interpret and define parameters for action.<br />
Itto as educational demonstration<br />
Jean Benoît-Lévy and Marie Epstein produced roughly 300<br />
short-subject films serving the cause <strong>of</strong> public health during the<br />
interwar period. Marie Epstein’s collaboration with Benoît-Lévy began<br />
when he commissioned her brother, Jean Epstein, to direct his first<br />
film, Pasteur (1922), commemorating the centenary <strong>of</strong> Louis Pasteur’s<br />
birth. Benoît-Lévy was part <strong>of</strong> a cadre <strong>of</strong> medical activists committed<br />
20 <strong>Journal</strong> <strong>of</strong> <strong>Film</strong> <strong>Preservation</strong> / 63 / 2001