Voilà l’enchaînement

October 4, 2015 · Knoxville Museum of Art · 2:00 p.m.

Voilà l’enchaînement has had only two North American screenings, at the Toronto International Film Festival and the New York Film Festival. Special thanks to Claire Denis for permitting us to screen it at The Public Cinema.

Voilà l’enchaînement is a series of monologues and conversations performed by Norah Krief and Alex Descas, who portray a mixed-race couple whose relationship begins, welcomes children, and disintegrates violently, all within the span of thirty minutes. Formally, it’s unlike anything Denis has done before. The closest precedent is perhaps Vers Nancy (2002), a short film in which philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy and a young woman debate “foreignness” as a concept while Descas, a dark-skinned embodiment of their signifying language, wanders just outside their view. Composed entirely of tight master shots and staged in an unadorned room, Voilà l’enchaînement is a bitter and pensive exploration of commonplace racism.

Artist’s Statement

Alex and Norah were asked to make a lecture at a theater festival last summer, and there was a carte blanche to a French writer, Christine Angot, whose last novel was about a couple who are . . . more than separating . . . almost destroying themselves, and about the consequences for the children. A huge book. The father is a Caribbean black man in the book, and the mother is a French white woman. Christine was attacked by the real mother — because it’s almost a real story — who recognized herself, and she lost the trial and had to pay a lot of money. So she decided to make a small lecture from dialogues from the book.

I was not aware of that, just that she cast Alex and Norah. She called me and said, “I’d love to have you come to Avignon to listen to this lecture.” I came, and when it was finished we went to dinner and I said, “Wow. If I could, I would film it immediately.” Because the way they respond to each other . . . it’s funny but it’s dramatic, yet it says a lot about what is racism and what is not racism. It’s sometimes hidden even through a love affair and making children.

At that time I was working in an art school in the north of France. The school always asks the people who go there–like Pedro Costa or Bruno Dumont–if they agree, to do whatever they want, with nothing but the equipment of that school and, of course, no real budget. So I immediately said, “I know what I’m going to do.” On a black wall in their little studio with nothing. It was so different from what I normally do. I thought I was filming words, filming words of people who try to be a couple but something is wrong right from the beginning. — From an extensive interview with Darren Hughes

About the Filmmaker

Claire Denis was born in Paris, raised primarily in West Africa, and graduated from France’s Institut des Hautes Études Cinématographiques (IDHEC). Her films include Chocolat (88), the documentary Man No Run (89), No Fear, No Die (90), I Can’t Sleep (94), Nenette and Boni (96), Beau travail (99), Trouble Every Day (01), Friday Night (02), L’intrus (04), 35 Shots of Rum (08), White Material (09) and Les Salauds (13). Voilà l’enchainement (14) is her latest short.