working memos as fragments of gold...

"the noises must become music"

"be sure of having used to the full all is communicated by immobility and silence."

"your film - let people feel the soul and the heart there, but let it be made like a work of hands"

"no intellectual or cerebral mechanism. simply a mechanism."

"not to use two violins when one is enough"

"images like modulations in music"

"practice the precept: find without seeking"

"to translate the invisible wind by the water it sculpts in passing."

"make visible what, without you, might never have been seen"

" how to hide from oneself the fact that it all ends up on a rectangle of white fabric hung on a wall? (see your film as a surface to cover)"

ten from robert bresson's notes on the cinematographer

when all that is left of a film is its background noise...

for the month of october i was invited to present a new sound piece on the website of the palais de tokyo museum in paris. the piece is a reworking of a limited red vinyl 7" released in 2007, and made by manipulating the 1962 soundtrack LP of robert bresson's film proces de jeanne d'arc. the piece is titled "one stone. and arcs and ears."

the piece was made by removing (although not completely and precisely) all of the speaking voices from the bresson LP, leaving only the background sounds, incidentals, etc. some of which were lightly processed.

for the web version, i reworked some of the mixing on both tracks and cross faded them together to form one continuous work. since the original two tracks/sides were both made from side one of the original LP, it's nice to be able to share them as one continuous "ear film".

i should also mention that it is really nice to click on a podcast-link and hear the opening sounds of crackling vinyl.

for those who speak french, you can read a longer text about the piece on the museum's website, but for those of you who speak only english, here is the text:

i began with the soundtrack LP of robert bresson's film "proces de jeanne d'arc", and edited out all of the talking of the main characters. in many cases my edits were not perfectly clean so whispered beginnings or endings of words can still be heard.

i wanted the trajectory to lose its sense of narrative - to shake all of the specificity out of it. i wanted to turn it into a path of ambivalence, fragmentation, pauses, and abstraction.

there is no music on bresson's original soundtrack, only talking and incidental sounds. on side one of the LP, a single musical instrument is heard for a few seconds (a horn playing a kind of fanfare in the middle of side one); and thus through sampling, i extended the horn sound, and used it to create a tonal field for the existing edited sounds to rest upon.

the title - 'one stone. and arcs and ears.' was made from taking some of the letters in robert bresson's name and the film title "proces de jeanne d'arc" to generate new words. 'one stone.' refers to the rock thrown through jeanne's window in the film, while 'and arcs and ears.' refers to the circular motion of the spinning record and the activity of listening...

i like very much how the crackling sounds of the original vinyl sometimes sounds a bit like the crackling of a very small fire.

for anyone completely obsessed and needing even more, here is a link to the original release with even more information...

eyes closed, open a book, place your finger on a page, open your eyes...

"silence, musical by an effect of resonance. the last syllable of the last word or the last noise like a held note."

from robert bresson, notes on cinematography

like bresson's films, this two sentence entry in what might be my all time favorite book, has almost nothing unnecessary. so many of the words carry their own weight:
silence
musical
resonance
syllable
word
noise
held
note...

the rest, when pieced together reads rather nicely as well:
by an effect of
the last
of the last
or the last
like a
...

leave your brains at home and carry a capacity for feeling with you...

"why did you wish to add yet another to the number of films made about joan of arc?

to make her real and immediate...

you never show joan in the same shot as her accusers, why?

first, i couldn't do it. the natural decor made it impossible to show them together. but i believe that it is good to create obstacles. for my part, i don't work well without obstacles... there is only one way of shooting people: from near and in front of them, when you want to know what is happening inside...

what do you expect the audience to bring to your film?

not their brains, but their capacity for feeling...

do you expect them to know the facts of the trial? is that why you don't explain who the participants are?

i never explain anything, as it is done in the theatre...

at the beginning of the film we're shown the back of joan's mother, with a hand on each of her shoulders. why do you just show her back?

because i want her to be a character. besides, it's not in the film itself. it appears before the title...

at one point in the trial, the judges make joan kneel. then you dissolve away to her standing again afterwards.

the moment of cutting has the same function as that of movement in other films. shakespeare also cuts at strange times. his cutting is like a door through which the poetry enters...

there are many shots of doors, open doors. do these relate to joans speech "if i see a door open", etc.?

when one is in prison, the most important thing is the door.

why are there a large number of shots of the english peering at joan through the crack in the cell wall?

there are not as many as you say - as few as possible...

why do you treat the burning partly as a subjective shot of the cross being obscurred by smoke?

i think you want me too much to explain what i did..."

excerpts from an interview with robert bresson by ian cameron regarding bresson's film "the trial of joan of arc". the interview was supposed to run on radio, but because it was done in english (at bresson's request), and thus 'rehearsed' (at bresson's request), "it was considered unsuitable for broadcasting as it now lacked even the appearance of spontaneity. it sounded not so much like an interview as a bressonian dialogue." from the book the films of robert bresson, praeger, 1969. image: soundtrack LP from the film.