ANARCHISM IN THE HISTORY, ART, SCIENCE AND CULTURE - FRAMES ANARCHISTS: CINEMA AND LIBERTARIAN CREATION - Diego Mellado (ca)

acracia.org : ANARCHISM IN THE HISTORY, ART, SCIENCE AND CULTURE - FRAMES ANARCHISTS: CINEMA AND LIBERTARIAN CREATION - Diego Mellado (ca)

"Cinema is not an art school, but illiterate, and film culture is not analysis, is 
agitation of mind. The films were born of the fairs and circuses, no art and scholarship." 
- Werner Herzog ---- The old story that tells Rudolf Rocker when he had the opportunity to 
meet Elisha Reclus, reveals an early relationship between anarchism and optical 
inventions: Paul Anheuser, his enigmatic companion at that time, had made a small optical 
invention, on the which I had high expectations for the future. Enthusiastic, he did not 
want to sell their plans to a financier, but, on the contrary, wanted to found a 
cooperative that, on the basis of this mysterious invention could finance the movement. 
However, an initial capital needed. Anheuser consulted with Rudolf Rocker and Father 
Meyer, however, none of them had the highest number was required.

Luckily, through scientific Maria Goldsmith, who also showed interest to the planes of 
this invention came home from Éliséeo Reclus, who, among, maps, books and a large globe 
welcomed them in his house in Sevres near Paris. Anheuser, with full conviction, presented 
the plan of its optical contraption. Reclus, who wrote down the details on a piece of 
paper, said that "the thing was worth", but he did not promise anything, because soon 
depart for South America.

It was late April 1893, the same year that Elisha Reclus would cross the narrow strip 
Chilean and two years before the Lumière brothers first publicly screened on frames in 
Lyon, French city. They did not imagine that by this we mean that a mysterious anarchist 
invented the first movie projector. We do not know some of the content of those 
interesting planes, much less if an opto prototype consisted that could have inspired 
these first projectors and that hazards of life, Anheuser lost during one of his 
adventures. The issue is different: this particular character, young libertarian, 
enthusiastic and confident, we are inspired, at least two things.

On the one hand, interest in the inventions, that is, for the tour in the fields 
unexplored for knowledge and technology; two aspects that anarchist thought has set 
voltage and Piotr Kropotkin states quite clearly in fields, factories and workshops 
referring to the combination of art, science and technology in Galileo Galilei, Isaac 
Newton, Gottfried Leibniz and Carl Linnaeus, inferring from it the need for comprehensive 
individuals who know how to handle both the know-how: there is not only the idea of a 
telescope, but also the ability to do so. The separation between mental and manual labor 
is a product of the division of labor. Moreover, this little anecdote is the expression of 
a method, which complements the anarchic perspective on the mechanical and intellectual 
work. As Ricardo Mella says "Anarchy means method, authority presupposes subordination as" 
one being the anarchist method of free cooperation, involving in this spontaneous 
coordination of individuals for work, for science, for art, for life . It is, in other 
words, Anheuser cooperative thinking and are also supporting their comrades strange 
initiative. And at the same time, a method, a way of doing, which is based on freedom, on 
the impetus of inventing without limits imposed by law: the principle of self-creation, 
the opposite of what subordinate momentum there is always beyond the idea, as would Diego 
Abad de Santillán, that the anarchist is the tormented individual with the idea of infinity.

Thus, the forgotten history of Anheuser (nomenclature urges us in the manual and 
intellectual work), appears to us as a past expression of the way, very prematurely, 
anarchists will conceive film technique Will we have taken a eg too far to get to talk 
about movies? No, like the film projector it is an opto-mechanical invention, what our 
German friend is a small optical invention. That is, the principles that we have listed 
above, we must add these new investigations in optics. So we remember the seventh art with 
this story and what it represented, decades later, will film directors such as Armand War, 
Jean Vigo or Henri-Cartier Bresson, or fruitful process happened during the Spanish Civil 
War. Indeed, the relationship between film and anarchism is very early, especially 
considering that from the beginning the film was not very popular. Their precursors, 
restless characters and inventors of their own projectors, thought of the film as a 
spectacle. The first screening in 1895, thanks to the Lumiere brothers showed the sea or 
the arrival of a train. Nothing more.

The Lumiere brothers did not believe it was a technique with a great future. Later, 
Georges Méliès, who was lucky to see these projections, began the following year to set up 
his own film production, rolling memorable films, including the famous Trip to the Moon . 
Until 1913, with the help of his family, he managed to put together a vast filmography of 
imagination, magic and adventure. However, it never made money, despite the success they 
had some of their films in the US market. Méliès stop making films that year because they 
simply could not financially support the project. Thus, the first decades of cinema were 
confusing. Despite this, the technique begins to spread around the world and various 
characters begin to make their own productions, as DW Griffith or Émile Cohl.

Thus, although before had appeared "anarchists characters" in some films, only in 1913 a 
clearer relationship between cinema and anarchism begins. According to a note from the 
prefecture of police written after the Congress Fédération Communiste 
Révolutionnaire-anarchiste and dating from August 18, 1913, "At the end of the 
anarchist-communist conference, the formation of a committee was announced aimed at 
creating a Film anarchist propaganda ". This committee becomes "Le Cinéma du Peuple", a 
cooperative founded film in Paris and in which twenty people, among which are Sebastien 
Faure, Jean Grave and Armand Guerra involved. In 1914 they published his first silent 
films: Les misères de l'Aiguille (The miseries of the Eagle), Clamour Raphael and Le vieux 
docker (The old dock) and La Commune (Commune), both directed by Armand War. Among these 
films, it should be noted Le vieux docker . This film, which tells the hard life of an 
older worker who, after thirty years of hard work and loyal service, is fired and thrown 
into the street, he is shot by the cooperative as a gesture of solidarity towards Jules 
Durand, syndicalist and French anarchist who worked in the spring and was tried unfairly 
in 1910.

Although "Le Cinéma du Peuple" not continuous with their filmic work, the few silent 
movies filmed became the first films that made the film a tool for political propaganda. 
Film pioneers undoubtedly that this gave a clear example of what later would other 
libertarian filmmakers.

One of these was the young filmmakers Jean Vigo, perhaps one of the most memorable in the 
history of cinema. Born in Paris in 1905, Vigo was the son of an anarchist named 
Eugène-Bonaventure de Vigo, who was assassinated in mysterious circumstances in 1917. He 
died very young, in 1934, due to tuberculosis. For this reason, he managed to shoot only 
four films, in which, however, could mean everything: À propos de Nice (A propos de Nice), 
1930, Taris, roi de l'eau (Taris, the king of the water ), 1931, Zéro de conduite (Zero 
conduct), 1933, and L'Atalante , 1934. While the first two are documentaries (or film 
essays, rather), the other two give us surreal stories about love and rebellion. While 
memorable what Jean Vigo evidenced by satirically portray the bourgeois vacationing in 
Nice or shouting against the authoritarian schools arising from the rebellion of children 
in Zero of Conduct, is the more remarkable how Jean Vigo conceived the film technique. 
Since the '30s, Vigo makes plans that until then had not been seen in movies, especially 
the way it conducts underwater filming, especially Taris, roi de l'eau , cortodocumental 
on Jean Taris, champion swimming.

The same in L'Atalante , love film containing a beautiful underwater sequence that simply 
revolutionized the film and that would only make us think that Jean Vigo filmed from 
dreamlike regions. Bernardo Bertolucci, then this scene will honor its renowned film Last 
Tango in Paris and François Truffaut makes his film The 400 Blows and Lindsay Anderson's 
If ... , honoring both the film Zero for Conduct , or Jean-Luc Godard with The Police , 
dedicated to Jean Vigo. Thus, Jean Vigo, unleashed imagination free man, conceived the 
film in a way that had not been done until then, like "Le Cinéma du Peuple" saw the film 
as a form of political propaganda, unknown idea the 10s. Thus, in this same line, but two 
years after the death of Jean Vigo, he reappears as a character named and that surely was 
one of the most passionate for cinema: Armand War.

His real name was Joseph estivalis Cab, and devoted mainly to journalism. He born in 1886, 
but their origin does not matter, because it was always a wanderer. This allowed him to be 
presented for forming the aforementioned "Le Cinéma du Peuple" in which he starred and 
directed. Certainly, we are far to establish a judgment about whether it was a good 
filmmaker or not, if your work has artistic value in the history of cinema. Eric Jarry, 
who wrote an article for the newspaper Le Monde Libertaire on Armand Guerra says why: "Was 
Armand Guerra a good director? Unfortunately, no other film of his was found in cinetecas, 
except fragments of his first films made with paltry resources (...) ". Certainly, we know 
who made several films, but few of them have been preserved, as the short documentary 
Prints Warriors , who shot during the Spanish Civil War, fighting on the front, and that 
has been lost (see his book Through shrapnel , edited by LaMalatesta, Madrid, 2005). In 
addition, also he died too young in 1939 because of a cerebral crisis that afflicted Paris.

Despite this, it is possible to issue some ideas, especially for his film Carne de Fieras, 
1936, which also presents unexpected cinema until then scenes. This particular story of a 
recently divorced who falls for Marlene, an artist who dances naked in lions are tamed by 
your spouse Marck boxer, is not only a landmark film in war, but also a particular way of 
seeing the traditional family and the female nude. ---- Fierce meat indeed finished 
shooting when he had broken the Spanish Civil War, having to deal with power outages, 
shelling and hunger for the Lions, who were about to devour the artist Marlene. Because 
the union Armand had decided that the shooting of this film should continue despite recent 
events and by the actors, some French, were sympathetic to the cause, Carne de Fieras was 
concluded filming during the war. Certainly, this process was accelerated not by 
circumstances, but because Armand wanted to go to the front of struggle "to impress our 
deeds".

Thus, Armand Guerra concluded a film where the concept of traditional family questioned 
(critical no less interesting for a Catholic society, as was the Spain of the time), as 
the scene ended with a boxer divorced evenly with a stripper of a circus, both adopting a 
child in the street. The family, then, is not the natural bond that grows out of marriage, 
but simply different and strange communion between individuals. At the same time, Wild 
Animal Meat can see the beautiful Marlene Grey walk naked without causing the sexual 
instinct, but just as the sight of a naked body, that is, the presence of nudity as a 
natural man. Another image unknown in the cinema of those years and which strongly shows 
the creative freedom of anarchist thought.

However, this film negatives were lost once the film is over. Nobody saw this film in 
1936. It was almost impossible, priorities were different. It took 56 years for it to 
appear again. However, 56 years after its contents were not as disruptive as in '36.

But if it is true that in 1936 does not disclose such a memorable film, it is equally true 
that in that year the most fruitful for the seventh art and anarchy process begins: the 
collectivization of the film and the unions in the entertainment industry. Indeed, this is 
a long story. It is now time to enumerate the various milestones and productions that were 
developed during this period. Just pick up everything stated so far, to note that the 
anarchist cinema '36 is the consolidation of a cinematic perspective advocated innovation 
and political propaganda.

But nothing is the result of magic: thanks to the outstanding cultural and activist work 
that for decades made the National Confederation of Labour (CNT), the Spanish 
anarcho-syndicalism began to have a broad membership in the film industry, to found in 
1930 Unique Union of Public Performances in Catalonia. Thanks to this, when civil war 
broke out, and with it the social revolution, the libertarian groups have a broad 
technical knowledge and ability to film material what happened in Spain, in front and in 
the collectivized regions. It becomes the first filmed war, bequeathing to it a valuable 
historiographical material. In this context, the CNT form "SIE Films" (Union of the 
entertainment industry), in order to collectivize film production and make available to 
the social revolution reportage and fiction films that were able to compete with the most 
popular export movies. Documentaries were filmed recognized as Fury over Spain , The Gap 
or Teruel has fallen , and original films as well We are , Slumber and Aurora de Esperanza 
, which contain numerous elements and approaches that had not yet experienced in the 
cinema. This allows, for some scholars speak of an "anarchist cinema", a label that, had 
it not been interrupted by the resounding events that began in 1939, he could have 
achieved great resonance in the history of cinema. For example, the mix of theater with 
film screenings, unimaginable at the time, was implemented by the libertarian groups in 
packed halls, unfortunately, then had to be bunkers to withstand the bombing of the phalanx.

Mixture of social, political and cultural revolution, intimidated by the fascist danger, 
and that after those decades has not returned to have the same splendor What has happened 
since then? What happened with those libertarians frames? Undoubtedly they have continued 
and it is still possible to find some directors tormented with the idea of infinity. 
However, this brief is not intended as a timeline or history of cinema. It is an 
interpretation and a narrative about the cause anarchist. The film is a clear expression 
of how the libertarian idea of creation as a constant beyond operates. In political and 
social terms so does: a libertarian society would never be a finished state, but something 
like an organic body, as exemplified Kropotkin, which keeps changing. The difference is 
that the changes are based on our will and not as the product of a world moving away from 
our capabilities and needs, at the mercy of small groups who decide for us.

Be in fertility movie or the wonderful writers who have accompanied the libertarian road 
map, whether in educational theories or in the way of conceiving the work and trade 
unionism, the pace of anarchism has always marking his steps and beats: the freedom, 
cooperation and there is always something new to say, create and do.

Diego Mellado

[Taken from the magazine Erosion # 2, Santiago de Chile, 1st. half 2013. Complete edition 
accessible http://erosion.grupogomezrojas.org/n2-ano-i-primer-semestre-de-2013/ .]

http://acracia.org/fotogramas-acratas-cine-y-creacion-libertaria/