Films by Armand Gatti made in the Montbéliard region with immigrant workers.
Images and editing: Hélène Chatelain, Stéphane Gatti.

In early 1975, Montbéliard's Centre for Cultural Activities invited Armand Gatti to create a work in direct collaboration with the people of the town. The Centre provided video equipment and a subsidy from the Cultural Intervention Fund. Armand Gatti observed Montbéliard, the second-largest working class concentration in France, dominated by Peugeot. The town is home to some 10,000 immigrants, out of a total population of 35,000. He found that Montbéliard was a "schizophrenic town", inhabited by people with different backgrounds and languages. A town like the Tower of Babel. The initial hypothesis: "a film about you" – or the story of a town recounted by its inhabitants – became a history of inhabitants with a common denominator of exile. A film made in close collaboration with immigrant workers. In the context of Montbéliard's nebulous form with many nationalities, Armand Gatti suggested that each community should write its own scenario and give its own view of Montbéliard. Accompanied by Hélène Chatelain and Stéphane Gatti, he proposed to turn the words into images. Video provided the material that was adequate for the requirements. Armand Gatti: "[…] It is neither cinema nor television, but it is the possibility of brining into existence a language that we couldn't have had with television. And it couldn't exist in the cinema either, because it has no working class vocation, it tends to elitism: you send off your films to the laboratory and the people don't see a thing, whereas here, they have an immediate view of what they are doing."1 In the January 30^th 1977 edition of Le Monde, Catherine Humblot wrote: "Le lion, sa cage et ses ailes is not only an exemplary form of activity, it's also a new way of writing, a Godard-like style of talking round and about communication …" The immigrants chose to speak out. They filmed inside the factory but also in the streets where they lived. A kind of immigration that takes on its own personality and finds its own identity. Armand Gatti doesn't work with groups; he follows the individual. The film escapes from the dominant ideology of the 1970's. It doesn't try to unite the working class and dissociates itself from the myth of homogenisation; on the contrary, it shows that everything that has been said about the class struggle doesn't necessarily correspond to the experiences that immigrants have lived through. Hélène Chatelain: " […] it caught on about immigration. Because we didn't have a political standpoint, nor a strategic approach, but a variable approach that gave a completely existential point of view. Suddenly, the desire to speak out, the desire for an identity took a strong hold. "2 Le lion, sa cage et ses ailes takes on the form of an epic of everyday life with the appearance of faces that come into view, with first names and surnames. Individuals who carry the traces of the past (marked by history, by war…). Altogether, the full video includes six films, which are interwoven and superimposed, a prologue and an epilogue. Armand Gatti's team followed the progress of each community's scenario – sometimes the scenario became the story of the scenario. Over a six-month period, 90 hours of tape were recorded. Armand Gatti gave up the idea of making a 90-minute film that he would structure himself and at the same time, he gave up on the notion of making a "film d'auteur". The team decided to make three films, then six, then seven – finally, one for each nationality. In spite of renewed resistance, Armand Gatti was able to obtain funding from the town's social action fund and the cultural intervention fund, as well as help from the INA. It took two years of shift editing, Stéphane Gatti during the day and Hélène Chatela at night, to finish the work. The editing gives a constant pace for these eight films, which are always well framed and often have moving images. Just as Armand Gatti's theatrical works are a blend of historic context and imaginary transportation, these films tell the story of everyday life to which various imaginative aspects are added – themselves the subject of commentary. The film builds on repetitions and corresponding features from one community to another. Each pivots around a central point: Mijailovic Radovan's identity papers, Uncle Salvador and his images of the Spanish civil war, Charles's sculpture and the memory of Severian, the dance and colour of the Polish group, the Ramadan intonation and the photograph of Gramsci. And yet each work remains the very image of Montbéliard, a schizophrenic nebulosity that is set out through the culture of immigrants and the poetic vision of Armand Gatti. Each film contains several films.

1 La Nouvelle Critique, June-July 1978 (as reported by Emile Breton).
2 Jean-Paul Fargier, "Une expérience de vidéo" (interview with Hélène Chatelain), Cahiers du cinéma, number 287, April 1978.

Italian film: Montbéliard est un verre (40')

Montbéliard is an Italian town consisting of two parts that never meet, the South and the North – represented by Gian Luca from Milan and by Pasquale, the man from the South. The film was meant to have been about the confrontation between two culinary cultures. A debate open to the community relationships, from North-African couscous to sardines grilled Portuguese style, from the fat and peppers from Zagreb to paella from Spain and the ocean. The representatives of the South refuse, they want to assert their 'Italian nature', their 'chercher la femme'. For Gian Luca, "there are no worse racists than the immigrants themselves". The confrontation between Northern and Southern Italy persists. The demonstration begins with "Vicenzo" and his southern jealousy, his repressive and Sicilian up bringing, his "quest of a prelate of the Renaissance". It continues with Pasquale's search for the 'Fellinian woman'.

At the opposite extreme from this quest, Anne-Marie, daughter of immigrants from the North, is searching for knowledge, knowledge that must be paid for. She sells subscriptions for a major newspaper in the east. According to Armand Gatti, she is more aware than the others of just how much Montbéliard is a superimposition of schizophrenic towns. Her 'Italian nature' is the sunshine of knowledge. The scenario changes, falls into place. Gian Luca accepts, but still wants to portray his own 'Italian nature'. The sun is part of this so he accepts.

The common link between all the communities is the factory. This knows only one season: the season of noise.

On the contrary, the springtime of the communities allows an incursion through a profusion of images and traditions. Moroccan Montbéliard looks out its attire for festivities and arrivals. Spanish Montbéliard seeks contact and gentleness, where everything is a sign. Yugoslav Montbéliard shows its strength – images of karate – so as not to have to use it. Polish Montbéliard has its own qualified gardener. Georgian Montbéliard has its sporting spring. Turkish Montbéliard has its retired peoples' promenade.

In the factory, the Italians confront each other over the question of Gramsci, who has been forgotten by the older generations. Gian Luca admits to being torn between his culture open to Europe and, on the other hand, his aspect of Benito Mussolini the braggart.

After a few drinks, Gian Luca declares: "Montbéliard is a glass." The film follows this idea through. In the same manner as Chris Marker's Jetée, there is a series of photographs. These are all of glasses and they retrace the life of the Italian community. Gian Luca explains to Pasquale, who is getting upset, that the simple fact of beg in a photograph that is part of a film directed by them – Italians, workers, immigrants - and the fact that they have something to say, through the film, to the workers who will watch it, is a victory.

Dominique Garrigues