L’Opera Mouffe (1958)
Agnes VardaExcerpt from a very early short by the director of ‘The Gleaners and I’ (see elsewhere on digidoss). Without narrative: merely a montage of faces observed in the Parisian streets.
Yeah! That’s true. This documentary is merely focusing on people’s face in the street. But for me, this kind of video never make me bored.
The greatest part of this kind of experimental video(?) help us to explore the connection between footage and footage.
In this video, apparently it is merely a montage of humans’ face. But we can see there is a structure inside. First there is a montage of people stare to the camera. In this part we can notice each person have difference face expression or symbol on their face. Some people look uncomfortable, some look angry and some look embarrassing. And the color of the people create another layer above of the footage(white, black, brown). Then it cuts to a montage of people wearing sunglasses . After that, it is a montage of people who is disable, scratching their face as a symbol of uncomfortable, using holding a handkerchief etc. These elements are not showing one by one, but on the transition point, these is one person who get both symbols(or gestures). And this is how the progress of a video does. Montage is based on the connection between footages.