The Japanese Red Army fraction reconstructed by Eric Baudelaire

[RWM]

New podcast: FONS ÀUDIO #21. Eric Baudelaire

Born in Salt Lake City but based in Paris, Eric Baudelaire uses various formats to explore politically-charged historical events and documents. In FONS ÀUDIO #21 he discusses the background and context of the ideas and procedures behind 'The Anabasis of May and Fusako Shigenobu, Masao Adachi, and 27 Years Without Images'.

Link: http://rwm.macba.cat/en/specials/fons_eric_baudelaire/capsula
More info: http://rwm.macba.cat/uploads/20130827/Fons21_eng.pdf

In 'The Anabasis of May and Fusako Shigenobu, Masao Adachi, and 27 Years Without Images' Baudelaire creates a transmedia piece (a film shot on Super 8, but also photographs and printed documents) that brings to light the personal stories, the political intrigue and the life journeys of these three iconic figures linked to the Japanese Red Army in the course of almost three decades living underground in Lebanon. Like other works by Baudelaire, this piece emphasises multiple tensions, between yesterday and today, between the real and the fictitious, the absent and the present, over-documentation and oblivion, actual events and memory. Always focusing particularly on Masao Adachi, the Japanese filmmaker and political activist who, in the sixties, developed a methodology for critical analysis based on the observation of the landscape.

Baudelaire’s work thus stems from an experimental approach, almost in the scientific sense: what happens when you apply a theory that is virtually an unexplored mystery to the person who created it? An experiment that, Baudelaire claims, raises other interesting questions, regardless of the end result. Is it possible to reconstruct those twenty-seven years of exile in Beirut through the study of the day-to-day surroundings of its protagonists? What narratives can we deduce from the remains of certain architectural and power structures? How do we, in general, reconstruct history through fragmented and terribly subjective fragments? What role do images play in this reconstruction?

Timeline

00:20 Introduction to the work
01:33 The characters and their journey
03:22 Masao Adachi's Landscape Theory
08:36 Anabasis as analogy
12:03 Adachi and the permanent revolution
13:56 The revolutionary potential of a camera

You can find other features related to cinema and filmmaking here: http://rwm.macba.cat/en/cinema

[poblequadrat]

Are they exhibiting this at Macba? I might drop by, not sure what to expect though.

[RWM]

It was on show, but not any more. Sorry I did not see your reply before.