Intermède. 2022. Greece/France. Directed by Maria Kourkouta. DCP. In Greek; English subtitles. 24 min.
Le chant des oubliés. 2022. France. Directed by Luc Decaster. DCP. In French; English subtitles. 61 min.
Luc Decaster, a native of France’s historic port city Saint-Nazaire, was an industrial draughtsman in the automotive sector and a high school history teacher before turning to filmmaking in the 1990s. It should be no surprise that his filmography, too-little known in the United States, incisively explores themes of labor and society. His most recent film, Le chant des oubliés, chronicles the shuttering of Argenteuil’s Semperit rubber factory, on the outskirts of Paris, following corporate consolidation and outsourcing overseas. Decaster and Claire Atherton have worked on six films together, and in this newest collaboration, a lyrical bent joins the filmmaker’s distinctive vérité documentary style (as seen in Qui a tué Ali Ziri?, also screening in this series). In between scenes of the plant workers’ organizing efforts in response to layoffs, Decaster trains his camera on the vacant factory floor, in a hypnotic evocation of early-20th-century machine films, to a score by musician Marius Atherton, Claire Atherton’s son.
The screening opens with Intermède, an expressionistic portrait of a shipyard filmed in Greece but rendered almost timeless through experimental filmmaker Maria Kourkouta’s black-and-white 16mm cinematography. In the associative combination of close-ups and wide shots, tidal rhythms emerge in the gestures of men laboring to the cycles of nature as ropes are heaved to and fro, hulls repaired, and boats set back out to sea.