Caméramages by Pierre Perrault (review)

Pierre Perrault. Cameramages. Edited with a preface by Guy Gauthier and Yves Lacroix Edilig/Editions de I'Hexagone (Collection 'Cin~graphiques') . 127. 67f 1983 was a good year for Pierre Perrault in France. Not only did the publications branchof the influential Ligue fran,aise de I'enseignementet de I'education permanente select Perrault to be the first Quebec filmmaker to be featured in its collection of monographs entitled 'Cinegraphiques '; but the Institut national de l'audiovisuel (in conjunction with regional French Television, FR3) also invited Perrault to lead offa series of documentary films entitled Regards Ii/rangers sur la France (first broadcast on PR3 3 November 1983). Of course, Perrault is too faithful to the cause of Quebec cultural independence to have allowed such events to be exclusively French. The book of his writings was co-published with his Montreal publisher, and the town he chose for his TV filmwas Saint-Malo, the home ofJacques Cartier, which he visited in the companyof the young Quebec poet Stephane-Albert Boulais, whom we had already met in La Bete lumineuse (NFB, 1982). This is not the first book of Perrault's writings on cinema and cultural sovereignty. In 1971, Le Conseil quebecois pour la diffusion du cinema had included Perrault in its series of short introductions to Quebec cineastes. According to their established format, this work, by Alain Berson, included a biographical summary, some extracts from earlier interviews and writings, a new interview for the occasion, and a good bibliography and filmography. The current work has the advantage of covering a longer period, but with the emphasis clearly placed on interviews and articles of more recent vintage. Five of the seven pieces date from 1977 or later. For the purposes of division into chapters, each piece (in one case, two) is listed under the heading of a cycle or grouping of Perrault's documentary fiIms, and is preceded by a specially written paragraph or two by Perrault situating the films and the text more clearly. There is one exception, headed 'La Question du cinema: in which the interview uses Perrault's curious eulogy of Chaplin's Limelight as the point of departure for a broader discussion of Perrault's views on language, art, cinema, and cultural identity. The chapter divisions, however, give a somewhat misleading impression . The various pieces do not construct a linear argument, any more than the films to which they are attached follow a neat chronological pattern. Moreover, not all the films listed are discussed in the accompanying text. There is no reference, for example, to L'Acadie, I'Acadie or to the import of this film to Perrault's discourse in the section entitled 'La Question du Quebec' where it is listed in the heading. Nor does the book offer any supporting material in the form ofbibliography or filmography, which might have been extremely useful. Indeed, the only evidence ofthe 516 LETTERS IN CANADA 1983 work of the editors seems to occur in the two-page preface, in which they acknowledge their surrender of the editorial role to Perrault himself. The result is then a book which forces the reader into reflection upon the theme and variations of Perrault's formulation of a cultural philosophy . The argument proceeds along these lines. The dominant forms of cultural expression in Quebec are currently occupied by outsiders or are fixed in museum-like rigidity. To gain access to autochthonous forms of cultural expression, the dominant forms must be avoided. Where language is concerned, the pantheon of written literature must be abandoned in favour of the simple soil of the spoken word. For cinema, the exotic comforts of fiction must yield not to the picturesque of folklore but to the authenticity of the familiar, accessible only to the principles of cinema direct. Speech is viewed as non-international, non-standardized. It is not learnt in the schools of the state. It is the vehicle for cultural transmission corresponding to a simple society in which division of labour has not produced a hierarchy of classes, wage-slavery, and alienation. Speech is integrated into a celebration of the organic relationship between individual and collective, between man and beast, between humanity and nature, between living...