Le Giornate del Cinema Muto 2006 Sommario / Contents

You are kindly asked to send, not later than February 20th, a list of persons
whom you recommend to attend these courses, and to indicate for which of
the courses you recommend the candidate. It is also necessary that you
mention each candidate’s specialty, and whether they are interested in the
shorter course (lasting ca. 3 days) or the longer one (lasting ca. 6-7 days).
We intend to make the most of Mr. Mitry’s visit, with the aim of improving
the knowledge of our filmmakers. We are hereby at your disposal, and if
possible shall try to organize, based on your proposals, specific meetings,
lectures, and courses from the lecturer’s field, if they are not already
included in our programme.
We also intend that some of these courses will take place in other centres
of the Federal Republics.
Looking forward to your answer,
I am, dear comrades, sincerely yours
Vicko Raspor, Director
Jean Mitry arrived in Belgrade at the end of February 1964, and began his
lectures a couple of days later. Another circular letter is preserved in the
archives of the Jugoslovenska Kinoteka:
… In connection with our letter sent on 8th February this year we inform
you that Jean Mitry, renowned French film essayist and longtime professor
at IDHEC in Paris, invited by our Institute, will lecture about
FILM AESTHETICS AND THE MEANS OF FILM EXPRESSION.
The course will begin on March 2nd, and will last until March 18th.
The lectures will take place every day except Sundays, in the cinema of the
Jugoslovenska Kinoteka, Kosovska Street 11. They will last about 3 hours
(from 11 to 13:30) each, and will be illustrated with screenings.
As the number of attendees is limited, we kindly ask you to inform us of the
number of candidates that you would like to send. We will inform you in
good time as to how many of your candidates can attend the course.
Based on Jean Mitry’s schedule, we foresee that he will visit Sarajevo,
Zagreb, and Ljubljana from March 21st to March 23rd, and lecture about
film aesthetics and the means of film expression. We also foresee a
discussion with Mr. Mitry about the Yugoslav films that he will be able to see
during his stay in our country.
Looking forward to your prompt answer…
The Jugoslovenska Kinoteka’s theatre, numbering about 180 seats, was on
average half full.The lectures were translated simultaneously.The audience,
composed of film professionals and journalists, was very interested in the
matters expounded by Mitry. During and after the lectures they posed
many questions, concerning not only film theory, but also the current
situation in French cinema, the invasion of American film and its impact on
general audiences, etc. Jean Mitry’s courses were widely commented upon
in the Yugoslav press. (I had the pleasure of attending some of Mitry’s
lectures, and discussing with him the problems of the French nouvelle
vague and the tendencies of its imitation in Yugoslav cinema.)
Great interest was aroused by the screening of film illustrations in Mitry’s
lectures, and his comments on the principles of editing in the screened
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examples. This led to the idea to produce an educational film about the
history and function of film editing, with commentary by Mitry. The basic
initiative came from Mr. Vicko Raspor, film critic and Director of the Film
Institute, and Mr. Vladimir Pogacic, film director, Director of the
Jugoslovenska Kinoteka, and member of the Executive Comitee of FIAF
(later its Vice-President and President).They proposed that Jean Mitry should
realize such a film, using archive material from the Jugoslvenska Kinoteka’s
film archive, and the technical facilities of the Kosutnjak film studio in
Belgrade and the Central Film Laboratory.
By the end of March 1964 Mitry finished his lectures in Belgrade, and
visited some other Yugoslav cities. In April he started working on the film,
beginning with the selection of the material, then arranging the sequences,
and finally filming the introduction and recording his comments.There are
no records of his work; we do not even know who the editor was.The film
was edited in 35mm, and upon completion 16mm prints were made. All
that is recorded is that Jean Mitry’s last stay at the Jugoslovenska Kinoteka’s
film archive was on 8 April 1964. I suppose that his part of the work on the
film was then completed, and that the final technical realization was done
later by his Yugoslav collaborators. I could not find any paper documentation
about this film in the archive: there is no editing script, no working diary, no
budget or administrative documentation! Nothing but three 16mm prints
(French, English, and Serbo-Croat versions), and a 35mm work print,
magnetic soundtrack, and a few reels of cut negative.The three versions of
the film differ in length – the 16mm French version, which I believe is the
original, lasts 92 minutes; the other two versions are about the same
duration, a couple of minutes more or less.
The film is an excellent illustrated lecture on film editing by Jean Mitry. It
begins with an introduction by Mitry, seated at a table in a screening room,
talking to the camera about the importance of editing through the history
of the cinema, which he intends to demonstrate in this film.The main title
follows, and then there are 17 examples, starting with films by the Lumière
Brothers and finishing with Visconti’s La terra trema.Through excerpts of
varying length from films by Méliès, Porter, Griffith, Eisenstein, Orson Welles,
and others, Mitry demonstrates the historical development of editing as a
means of film expression. Mitry personally recorded the commentary for
each sequence for the French version, and then his text was dubbed for the
Serbo-Croat and English versions.
The film has only a main title, saying “Institut de film et Cinémathèque
Yugoslave Belgrade Présentent FILM SUR LE MONTAGE Réalisé par
JEAN MITRY”. There is no more information, no year of production, no
names of other collaborators, or any technical data. The film was never
officially registered, nor does it exist in the filmography of Yugoslav films
published by the Film Institute.
To my knowledge the film was presented publicly only once, 17 years after
being produced, during Jean Mitry’s last visit to Belgrade in May 1981. In
the crowded cinema of the Jugoslovenska Kinoteka, the very auditorium
where his courses took place in March 1964, Mitry lectured again,
explaining that his basic opinions on film aesthetics and the function of film
editing had not changed.After the lecture the Serbo-Croat version of the film
was screened, marking its only public screening.