Tadié Cinéma

Simone and Jean have just married and, looking for a home in the Paris region, are lucky enough to find a house with a garden in a residential suburb. Expecting their first child, the young couple began to observe how the parents of neighboring families were raising theirs.

Commissioned by the journal Présence Africaine, this short documentary examines how African art is devalued and alienated through colonial and museum contexts. Beginning with the question of why African works are confined to ethnographic displays while Greek or Egyptian art is celebrated, the film became a landmark of anti-colonial cinema and was banned in France for eight years.

An interesting mixture of filmed scenes with Belmondo and archival footage regarding cultural aspects of all kind around Paris, starting at the end of the 19th century and ending in the mid-1960's. Jean-Paul Belmondo leads us through the movie starting as a young photographer around 1900, a reporter in both world-wars and doing fictional interviews with lots of celebrities.

An old Montmartre building with countless tenants: on the seventh floor, a Russian painter, Igor, lives in his art and dreams, whose paintings express kindness and indulgence; two floors below, a poor cabaret singer, Seraphita, poses for her neighbor when she feels too lonely and abandoned; further down, the Prunelle family lives, where the father and mother, inveterate drunks, indulge in drink and give their eleven-year-old son. Tique, who seems to have become indifferent, the spectacle of atrocious domestic scenes. By the time the film begins, Father Prunelle, drunker than ever, has chased Tique's mother away with insults...

An engine moves from the roundhouse to a track where it couples with several passenger cars. At 2:10 in the afternoon, it starts a trip out of the station through the countryside to its destination. The film consists of a montage of shots, some close up, of the engine and its gears and wheels. With the accompanying ambient sounds and an orchestral score, the emphasis is on the engine's power and speed. Parallel lines of multiple tracks, telephone wires, and trees confirm a careful composition.