A Strange Crew

A STRANGE CREW "It is common knowledge that the figure of the producer is one of the latest mythological creations to date. His Olympian legend, fuelled by his position as the powerful character staying in the background, has inspired many novels, films and dreams. Quite the discrete type himself, Stéphane Tchalgadjieff has little to do with a nabob though. Not so much Zeus than Vulcan, he has spared no effort to keenly defend cinema. Or rather, one particular cinema. That of Robert Bresson, the Straubs, Huillet, Marguerite Duras’ INDIA SONG, or Jacques Rivette’s monumental OUT 1. In a word, cinema as art. Who is Stéphane Tchalgadjieff? Boris Nicot endeavours to portray him, and to try and wring more than just a few parsimonious confidences out of him. So images substitute to wordy confessions: film abstracts, sparkles of gems whose force is increased tenfold by being put under a microscope that way. He adds some "complicities": with Martine Marignac, a great heroine of production, Michael Lonsdale, Jean Douchet or Danièle Gégauff. A patient investigator, he uncovers all alliances, either invented, necessary or sought after. Thus the film is an epic tale, as secret as Balzac’s History of the Thirteen, the story of "a highwayman rather than a shopkeeper" (Benoît Jacquot), as well as the story of a time which hadn’t yet given up on the utopia of a cinema worthy of the name." Jean-Pierre Rehm