Journal of Film Preservation - FIAF

Courier du sud, Pierre Billon.
Source: Les Archives du film et du dépot légal du CNC, Bois d’Arcy
L’Atlantide, Jacques Feyder.
Source: Les Archives du film et du dépot légal du CNC, Bois d’Arcy
est sans cesse contrariée par des signes qui remettent en cause
l’aventure coloniale elle-même. Il s’agit là de l’affirmation du
cinéma comme un objet complexe, cohérent et autonome à la
fois, et qui procède d’un langage spécifique irréductible à la
réalité externe et déjouant sans cesse les contraintes de la
conjoncture. Si le cinéma colonial affiche ouvertement les
présupposés de l’idéologie coloniale, ses structures de
significations ne sont pas pour autant figées. A ce titre, à la
dominante optimiste et univoque de “missions civilisatrices” des
années trente succède dès le début des années quarante une
vision moins sûre, de facture beaucoup moins propagandiste et
beaucoup plus nuancée. S’agissait-il là d’une perte de contrôle
sur les signes ou d’une affirmation du clivage séparant le cinéma
du discours colonial et déjouant par la même occasion le
3 Journal of Film Preservation / 63 / 2001
This introduction to the symposium
summarizes the state of current ideas about
colonial cinema. Soon after independence,
colonial cinema was thought of in terms of
condemnation or refusal. But it was not until
the nineties that a new generation of
scholars began to manifest its interests in
colonial cinema, with modern scientific
analysis and sensitivity to human feelings.
Without responding to the esthetic criteria of
the history of cinema, the colonial films
would be recognized only as propaganda,
and relegated to the category of minor
genres. It is evident that a rigorous
analytical methodology is necessary, for
without it, the films would only play an
illustrative role of preconceived ideas.
Is it still necessary to continue to consider
the group of colonial films only for their role
in colonial thought and their integration of
the colonized in a system of representation ?
Because, parallel to this, the cinema allows
for a reading which escapes the pragmatic
operations of the time. The filmmakers have
not always gone to the African and Asian
colonies just for official purposes, they have
not only produced films on order, and have
not the single object of building European
imperialism. That is why the colonial films
present a double discourse situated in two
different layers by their content, be it
fictional or documentary. When one pushes
the analysis beyond the immediate effects
that they carry, one realizes that the
propagandistic vision is constantly
contradicted by the colonial adventure itself.
Thus, the dominant message of « civilizing
missions » of the thirties are succeeded in
the beginning of the forties by a vision less
sure of itself, becoming much less
propagandistic and more nuanced. Does this
mean a loss of control, or the separating of
cinema from the colonial discourse ?
The colonial cinema is also an affair of the
perception of the Other ; and this same
perception escapes the pragmatic vision of
the moment and becomes synonymous of
affirmation and the construction of an image
of self. It is written into an anthropological
line that goes back to the nineteenth century.
It is constructed of images built by painting,
literature and travel narratives, an exotic
vision for the colonial discourse. In such a
construction, a series of oppositions are
formulated between nature/culture,
savage/civilized, group/individual,
religion/science, etc., and in this duality a
polarity is set up between the colonial hero
and his opposite : “the native”.
The Rabat symposium gives us the occasion