The concern towards truth truly lies at the heart of “Chronicle of a Summer” (Jean Rouch, Edgar Morin, 1960), the question. “Can we, as humans, be truthful in front of the camera?” is the question that Rouch and Morin are asking of their protagonists.

After an entire digression, the question pops up once more at the end of the film, even though it’s not entirely explicit, in the sequence where there is a discussion between the protagonists and their friends after the screening of the footage. In this sequence, to the sheer surprise and confusion of the filmmakers, the spectators question the truth of the performances (meaning, the act of living and behaving in front of the camera) that appear on the screen. They accuse the protagonists of falsity, theatricality, and untruthfulness.

That which is amazingly fresh – especially from a contemporary point of view, of a new cinematic dogmatism – is the degree to which the two director’s approach is un-dogmatic. In their quest to search for the truth employing cinema, Rouch and Morin set into motion all sorts of filmic strategies that are still, to this very day, contested as being “improper” towards the ideals of documentary cinema:

• Rouch and Morin provoke reality, they shake the numbness out of it, and do so in several ways; they provoke round table discussions (the desired commensality described by Morin) or they insert two of their characters (Marceline and her reporter colleague) in vox-pop reportages on the street;
• The film’s protagonists turn into agents provocateurs of truth, whether – as previously states – it happens in the sequences shot in the streets, where they interact with strangers, or in those where people who would otherwise never meet are brought together, thus also turning into  subjects of the film, and reporters (the discussion between Angelo, the blue-collar worker, and Landry, the African student, or the interaction with Sophie, the cover girl of Saint Tropez)
• The protagonists are delegated by the filmmakers to also ask questions of others, thus being transferred into the role of reporters;
•   They inhabit forms that are derived from television, through reportages that investigate the streets, and even round table discussions, a sort of talk show that has a hint of wine to it;
•   They create an eclectic filming device that includes sequences in motion, where they accompany their characters leaving their homes or walking down the streets (especially in the sequence where Marceline walks around the Concorde and the old Halles of Paris; notably, said sequence contains Marceline’s rememoration of her experience as a Holocaust survivor under the form of an inner confession, as her voice does not align with the images);
• They use mise-en-scene to reconstruct certain moments in the lives of the characters, such as the moment when Angelo, the worker, wakes up, and the arrival of his mother, who is bringing him his breakfast;
• The filmmakers introduce their physical presences within the film, as protagonists of the debates that they are moderating or reflecting upon, such as in the final scene, set at the Musee de l’Homme (which ends with Morin’s dispiriting remark: „Nous sommes dans le bain”); their presence is performative;
• The editing alternates long single shots with highly edited moments, not only within the debates around the table, but also in the sequences that depict everyday life (again, not just in the scenes of Angelo and his mother, or Mary Lou and Jacques Rivette leaving their homes, etc.); the editing is made obvious, is not hidden, as a sign of the fact that the film’s duration is not the same as the duration of life, itself. The ellipses are visible, telling;
• The film itself is based on a process of casting, on an ideological choice of its characters, which follows and sustains the themes that the directors are interested in (post-Holocaust, anti-colonialism, the society of spectacle, capitalism as a system that oppressed the individual pursuit of happiness, etc.).

“Chronicle of a Summer” uses every single one of its means to contest the doctrinaire dogma of documentary cinema, which has survived to this very day even though the very definition of the concept of cinema-verité, which is supposedly a method of not intervening within reality, of supreme objectivity and unmediated observation, of abandoning all cinematic artifice. The artifices that Rouch and Morin use reveal the truth. They affirm a perspective. They state a position. The eclecticism of their means is a sign of freedom, of the freedom of the documentary genre as a free territory, which is experimental in the larger sense of cinema. And which eludes the canons that film history has generally retained under the umbrella of cinema-verité.

***

Chronicle of another summer: Echoes of Arsenie. An Amazing Afterlife

I revisited Rouch and Morin’s film (at the invitation of the After x Image visual culture festival) at the end of this summer, one that was – for me – charged by the impressions and emotions brought on by my discussions with the audience after the screenings of “Arsenie. An Amazing Afterlife.”

I was struck by how topical the issues raised by the 1960 film are today, in 2023, especially those concerning the relationship between film and truth. I’d like to talk a little about the echoes of these questions in the debate surrounding “Arsenie…”. (And by this, I do not mean to shelter myself from criticism by hiding under the vast shadow of prestige that is cast by Rouch and Morin’s “Chronicle…”, nor am I in any way suggesting that my film could have the same value.) Some of the thoughts transcribed here were formulated during the discussion that I had after the screening of Rouch and Morin’s “Chronicle…” with Andreea Chiper (whom I would like to thank, on this occasion).

Lately, I’ve been preoccupied with the sensation that we are living in an era of total suspicion – a suspicion that is first of all directed towards the authorities, towards our close ones and their hidden agenda, towards the image, towards science, and so on. This is where the need for objectivity arises. Simultaneously, our era is also one of complete credulity – credulity towards conspiracies of all sorts, towards counterfeit images, towards false authorities, and so on, once more.

Alexandru Solomon, director of “Arsenie. An Amazing Afterlife”

With regards to “Arsenie. An Amazing Afterlife”, I often heard the question “Still, what is the genre of this film?”. That is because the film includes observational sequences (in the bus, or in our stops along the way), interview-style conversations with the protagonists, readings of documents, and moments of group debates (let’s say, in a talk-show style format), but also reenactments or performative scenes. It’s fair that the need to frame a film within a genre is always conditioned on the cinema market, and that most productions can, indeed, be labeled according to one. The genre tag is permanently present in the marketing of films across various platforms. Beyond this marketing strategy, which makes the audience’s choices easier, in the case of hybrid documentaries the story is more complicated because hybridization, the notion of an “uncertain genre”, seems to breach the tacit trust that exists between spectator and filmmaker. (To put things on a lighter note, the best definition of “Arsenie’s…” genre came from a spectator who saw the film in Bucharest, who proposed the term bocumentary – stemming from the priest’s last name, Boca – instead of mockumentary.)

I believe that, as long as the spectator can discern the key to each sequence, almost anything is permissible. If the film exposes its artifice and method, if it clearly states what is a document – a quote from archives or the media – and what is observation or dramatization, I don’t see the mixing of genres as a problem. That’s why I’ve even included the names of the officers, informants, or parishioners who wrote those documents in the film, along with the sources of the press materials.

At the film’s screening at Ceau, Cinema! In Timișoara, a lady asked me whether the film is a documentary or not. Because, if it were to be a documentary, the framing would act as a guarantee towards the fact that the things presented in the film are objective truths, which she, as a spectator, would be willing to accept without any further questioning. But, since my film is neither a documentary nor a fiction film, she didn’t know what to rely on. The desire to believe without any sort of doubt… In fact, in the case of said lady, the trust in the film was mined by her fundamental disagreement with my position and that of the film. But also by the difficulty to tell apart, using her judgment, what is information and what is interpretation. This is where the pretension of objectivity comes in, which always floats above the head of documentary cinema. I think it’s more just to transparently explain one’s position (a subjective one, like in the case of anybody else) and then the spectator may then evaluate the truth for themselves. But this is not an easy feat. It implies constant critical efforts and freedom of thought. I prefer the notion of balance to that of objectivity. Balance, and the honesty to expose oneself and to expose the other protagonists.

Lately, I’ve been preoccupied with the sensation that we are living in an era of total suspicion – a suspicion that is first of all directed towards the authorities, towards our close ones and their hidden agenda, towards the image, towards science, and so on. This is where the need for objectivity arises. Simultaneously, our era is also one of complete credulity – credulity towards conspiracies of all sorts, towards counterfeit images, towards false authorities, and so on, once more. For example, yet another spectator, this time in the Romanian town of Botoșani, told me that he is certain of the fact that the photos of Arsenie Boca dressed in civilian clothing are fake because they are black and white (even though they’re taken in the sixties, and there is no rational reason whatsoever to doubt their authenticity). How can one re-establish trust?

I have the sensation that spectators find it hard to look at the moment of cine-verité and spontaneous dialogue in a different key, the ones in which the pilgrims express themselves, versus the moments of fictionalization, of reenactment, that are of course dramatized and imply the idea of playing, of performance.

Alexandru Solomon, director of „Arsenie. An Amazing Afterlife”

This comes on top of the reproaches that I have gotten several times, regarding the usage of documents from the Archives of the Romanian Secret Police as a “source of truth”. My answer to this is the fact that said archives must, of course, be regarded with suspicion, but that they also contain all sorts of types of documents and they must be read in a way that accounts for the person who wrote them (informants, actual officers, or citizens whose letters were intercepted and even Arsenie Boca, himself – during his investigation). To know who wrote them, in what context, and for which purpose. To confront them with other documents, just as we do with the Dead Sea tablets – to remain on the same terrain. There is no such thing as a “pure” document, the issue is how to interpret them in a critical fashion that allows us to come closer to the truth. There’s also the issue (raised by other spectators) of the selection of documents that I included in the film. There was a selection, of course, which was part of my attempt to confront myth with fact. In Brăila, an audience member criticized me for using the note about how Arsenie Boca combed his beard to make sparks fly, because it was written by Dudu Velicu – who was an agent of influence (writing under the pseudonym Viator) and wanted to demean Arsenie according to a predetermined plan (I wonder: in the 40s?). In fact, several informants recount the same scene, several years apart. In contrast, the same spectator – and no one else – did not protest the fact that I had used a note written by a secret police officer who reported that the car that came to arrest Arsenie had broken down on the way.  I used both documents because they speak of how the legends built around Arsenie Boca came to be, and how officers, informers, and believers alike participated in this construction.

Generally speaking, I have the sensation that spectators find it hard to look at the moment of cine-verité and spontaneous dialogue in a different key, the ones in which the pilgrims express themselves, versus the moments of fictionalization, of reenactment, that are of course dramatized and imply the idea of playing, of performance. The idea that the pilgrims become actors, that they are now delivering themselves, and then, in the following sequence, they are acting and interpreting certain roles, this idea is elusive or hard to swallow. It obligates you, as a spectator, to constantly change optics. The tableaux vivants in “Arsenie…” are specially constructed as naive, clumsy improvisations that recall Viflaim, to render artifice and mise-en-scene visible. Together with the protagonists and the crew, we embodied legends and tried to construct images where there are none – because miracles resist representation. I sought out this tension, the double of fiction, I provoked them and then I observed what was happening while filming it.

In the end, the process is documentary, insofar as the mise-en-scene is observed in the same manner as spontaneous happenings. Under the given conditions, it seems to me that artifice can trigger something authentic, it can bring out something that is hidden beyond the surface. Maybe I’m wrong. But I believe that the collective exercise – which was made in collaboration with the protagonists – of playing, of dressing them up and giving them roles is a way to discuss more than just the theatricality of Arsenie Boca’s figure, or the fiction behind the cult, it’s also a way to render how we each participate to the social spectacle that we are witnessing. We are both inside of it, as well as outside. This is where the humor of the situation arises from, the sensation that some spectators have that they are watching a parody that exploits the performers, even though this is a collective exercise that everyone is aware of.  We are always dressing up as other characters – in front of the camera – to find out something about ourselves. Dressing up is closely linked to the idea of parody, of counterfeiting. But it is also a game of appearances that does not pretend to be something that it is not. And this, of course, is added to the fact that most protagonists have some work experience as extras in fiction films; they like performing, being someone else, while constantly exposing something from within themselves.

I will also arrive at the idea of casting. After the screenings of “Arsenie…” I noticed that it is hard to accept that a documentary film also involves a process of selecting one’s protagonists. To remain onto the terrain that is usually defined as direct cinema or cinema-verité, both Rouch and Morin, but also the Maysles Brothers or Frederick Wiseman choose their characters. Documentaries depend to a very high degree on their cast, and on the people that they choose to portray, maybe even to a higher degree than fiction films. The selection first comes in during the shooting, but also during the editing phase, by eliminating some or enlarging the presence of others.

In all the films that I have ever made, I had to choose my protagonists, and that, of course, reflects an intention and an attempt to depict the most representative people in the case of a respective story. But never has this choice been ever more criticized than in the case of “Arsenie…”.

In Sfîntu Gheorghe, someone asked me if I really couldn’t find any “normal people” during the casting process of the film. I also heard this rebuke in Timișoara, where a lady (probably a teacher) told me that none of the characters in the film could be used as role models for young people because all the characters in the film were uneducated or outright bizarre. In Buzău, I was told that the protagonists are not, in fact, true orthodox Christians, because “they are not sufficiently catechized”. These reproaches come from both the conservative, religious side of the audience, as well as from the area that could largely be defined as progressive. Neither one nor the other seem to accept the fact that this group of pilgrims could be a representative sample of society – closer to the norm than to the exception –, but rather, they see it as a tendentious selection on the part of the director, a distorting mirror, which causes us a feeling of shame.

First of all, that’s not true, as the film features people with very diverse backgrounds in terms of work and education. Sometimes they say things that may seem extravagant, but at other times, they make observations that are pertinent, even profound, and oftentimes even common sense. In Iași, an audience member told me that he was suspicious of the pilgrims’ performance because they were paid “actors” and – based on this contract they have with me – I had the power to tell them what to say. Several others asked me if I wrote their lines. That is even though I especially edited the scene of my exchange with the first protagonist who undergoes an interview in the film when he asks me to tell him what to say, and my response is that I expect him to tell me his personal opinion. And, during the group debates or in their confessions in front of the curtain, I hope that it’s quite clear that the protagonists are freely expressing their beliefs. Again, how can one re-establish trust?

I’ve been told that I have especially chosen my protagonists to demonstrate my thesis. This means, then, that the film in itself is a demonstration, rather than a common journey during which the initial premises are questioned and then transformed.

Personally, I believe that a documentary is, in particular, a research process (that is, if we were to require a definition). You start from somewhere, but you end up in another place. And the core of the genre is not objectivity, but rather, the idea of investigating, of seeking out a dialogue with others and with yourself, as a filmmaker. The central question is whether the characters that were gathered together as a result of the casting are directed by the filmmaker towards certain results or if they contribute to the film unexpectedly, with their personalities and experiences that elude the filmmaker’s intentions.

Personally, I believe that a documentary is, in particular, a research process (that is, if we were to require a definition). You start from somewhere, but you end up in another place. And the core of the genre is not objectivity, but rather, the idea of investigating, of seeking out a dialogue with others and with yourself, as a filmmaker.

Aleandru Solomon, director of Arsenie

The paradox is that “Arsenie…” is the film in which I have relied the most on chance, on improvisation, on the protagonists’ free contribution. I knew the people quite little, but from the very first day they came to the bus, they amazed me, and each of them brought along something that was connected to their lives: be it a musical instrument or an object that allows you to read the stars, a list of poems that they wanted to sing out loud, an extremely personal and intimate story. And, indeed, just as I discussed with Andreea Chiper after the screening of “Chronicle of a Summer”, the presence of the camera somehow forces you to construct a mask or a character. But, to the very same degree, the presence of the camera is capable of catalyzing something that is more profound, that can provoke you to throw away your mask and costume, to expose something within yourself that you cannot even suspect within yourself.

Cinéma +-= vérité ?

I will conclude things here. I left aside all other comments and reactions towards the film’s ideological components, towards my personal legitimacy towards the subject, or the torrent of xenophobic hate that has been unleashed throughout this summer. They could be the subject of another chronicle of the same summer. Especially because winter is coming: a winter of hate, censorship, and dogmatism.

Alexandru Solomon

In the early 90s, Solomon emerged as a young DOP and started making documentaries aside from filming feature films. His first long feature, The Great Communist Bank Robbery (2004), broadcast on Arte and on BBC's prestigious Storyville, was a multi-awarded hit. Kapitalism - our secret recipe (2010), a feature doc on the rise of a new ruling class in the East, was presented at IDFA and Sarajevo, while his latest long feature, Arsenie. An Amazing Afterlife premiered in Karlovy Vary. In 2016 he published his monograph “Representations of Memory in Documentary Film”. Alexandru is teaching at the University of Arts in Bucharest and is the president of the One World Romania Association.