2026.07.27
Interviewers: Park Kyujae and Il-hwan
Interviewee: Jean-Claude Rousseau
We would like to thank Jean-Claude Rousseau for taking part in this interview and carefully reviewing the text. We also thank Cho Inhan, programmer at the Experimental Film and Video Festival in Seoul (EXiS), for helping make the interview possible, and James Pearson for proofreading the English text.
INTERVIEWER
We would like to begin by going back to the period just before you started making films. You spent some time in New York in the 1970s, is that right?
ROUSSEAU
Right.
INTERVIEWER
And you encountered avant-garde cinema there. Do you remember roughly when this was? Were there any particular films or filmmakers that made a strong impression on you at the time?
ROUSSEAU
I did not go to the United States, to New York City, with the intention of seeing underground films. But while I was there, I went to what we might call the Jonas Mekas Cinematheque. I was very surprised by something in the small bookshop in the building. There were only a few books, and one of them was about Robert Bresson. They had published it. What made a great impression on me was realizing that underground filmmakers cared about Robert Bresson. So I went there several times. I cannot quite remember the year. If I had already moved to New York, it would have been 1976. There was the opening of Chantal Akerman’s Jeanne Dielman at the Museum of Modern Art. I met her then. And I also met someone I had already seen in Paris; I think it was Dominique Noguez. That is it. I was in that kind of company. As people used to say about New York at the time, I discovered some underground films and found out how important Mekas was to them. Not to me. I do not care very much for Mekas’s films. But perhaps that was my first encounter with them. Around that time, I also saw a Michael Snow film for the first time.
And, quite differently, I saw a film by Yasujirō Ozu for the first time. It was probably at the Japanese Cultural Center. I cannot remember which film was screened. That was my first time. It was the 1970s, and Ozu was beginning to become very well known in Western countries, especially in Europe. After I returned from New York, I saw an Ozu retrospective in Paris, perhaps in 1978 or 1979. So many people were queuing outside the cinema to see the films. I remember seeing Alain Resnais in the queue. Even he could not get in because it was already full. That means something. It shows how much interest there was in France. Germany was probably similar.
When I moved to New York, I already had in mind a screenplay I had written. Before that, I had visited a producer’s office, where I was told how a screenplay was supposed to be written: the description of the image on the left and the sound on the right. I did my best to follow that format. At first, it was simply handwritten. I would not call it a story. It was a handwritten account of the mental images I had in mind. That is how Le Concert champêtre began. I put the screenplay into the proper format to submit it to a commission. And, fortunately, they refused it. They refused to give me money to make the film. Why do I say “fortunately”? Because the screenplay states that it is impossible to film it. You cannot read the screenplay right now (an english version1) will be published in New York this autumn), but if you read it, you will understand. If it has a subject, that subject is its own history. The screenplay is its own subject. In fact, its fictional content cannot be realized. It cannot be made into a film. I played the game. I did what filmmakers, future filmmakers, do when they want to make a film and ask a commission for money. But you can understand why I say “fortunately.” If I had received the money, it would have broken the story.
Before sending the screenplay to a commission, I first showed it to Dominique Noguez, and then to Marcelin Pleynet. He was one of the most interesting critics at the time and was associated with the artistic movement Supports/Surfaces. I was very interested in their work. That was why I showed the screenplay to them. This is how I really got to know Dominique Noguez. We became friends after he read it. He liked the screenplay very much. I also sent it to Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet. At first, Jean-Marie said, “I never read screenplays.” But he did read it, and he liked it very much. He even wrote something about it. At the time, there was a large program of avant-garde, independent, and experimental films at the Cinémathèque française. It was called Jeune, Dure et Pure: “Young, Hard and Pure.” One of its curators was Christian Lebrat. I already knew him, and he knew my films. He was also the person who wrote a nice text for the catalogue. Christian Lebrat wanted a text, or a few words, from Jean-Marie about La Vallée close. He knew that the film existed thanks to Danièle Huillet and Jean-Marie. The blow-up to 16 mm would never have happened if they had not taken an interest in it. As an aside, they did what needed to be done. Danièle, especially, took care of the practical matters, such as finding the money. Thanks to them, it was possible to make the blow-up from Super 8 to 16 mm. I watched the test with them in one of the screening rooms at the Cinémathèque française. I thought it was quite awful. But Jean-Marie said, “No, no, we have to continue.” Many people knew about this, and Christian Lebrat was one of them. That was why he wanted to ask Jean-Marie to write something about La Vallée close. I gave him the phone number. Straub was in Rome at the time. I had already sent him the screenplay a few months earlier. Jean-Marie wrote his response by hand and asked Christian Lebrat to reproduce it in facsimile.
You know what Jean-Marie wrote about La Vallée close, but he also added something about the screenplay. In French, he said something like, “And Jean-Claude Rousseau has written something magnificent, which has nothing to do with experimental cinema,” referring to the screenplay. After receiving that response from Jean-Marie, Christian Lebrat called me. He asked, “What is this screenplay? Could I have a look at it?” I said, “Of course.” He read it and wanted to publish it. That is how it began, and how this book, Le Concert champêtre, came into being.
INTERVIEWER
Jean-Marie wrote this about La Vallée close: “Every shot (frame, image, light) of La Vallée close issues a roll of the dice, and casts into nothingness three-quarters of contemporary film ― along with its directors of photography!.”
ROUSSEAU
That is the handwritten response Jean-Marie sent to Christian Lebrat. I believe it is the first paragraph, and then he talks about the screenplay.
INTERVIEWER
Following on from Jean-Marie’s statement about La Vallée close: many films today are increasingly defined by economics and commercial mythology. Your work seems to reveal the strength of an individual standing against this larger tendency we call capitalism. What do you think about the political power of your films?
ROUSSEAU
Your question is very interesting. I have no such intention at all. But why do I find it interesting? Because there was a very good review in Le Monde of my latest film2), Dernier arrêt pour le billet circulaire, which screened in Marseille a few weeks ago. It would be good if you could read how the article ends. It says that this was the most political, the most radical film of the entire festival. It is usually a documentary film festival, and most of the films are connected with political thought. I do not talk about politics at all. But it is as though the way the films exist, the way my films are made, fights against the commercial way of making films. I mean the films themselves, rather than any facts I put forward. I am not a fighter. I do not make films in this way to fight against anyone. But I think many people cannot stand my films because they reflect what those people are doing. Their work has nothing to do with art, or with what an image should be. So I am pleased, especially because people reacted to that article in Le Monde. A woman poet who is a friend of mine and lives in Marseille told me that the critic was quite right, because of the film’s radicality. I am not a fighter. I am a weak person. But precisely because of that, I know how strong my films are. I cannot make them in any other way.
INTERVIEWER
Could we return to the screenplay, Le Concert champêtre? What place did it occupy in your cinematic world?
ROUSSEAU
I could say “the roots.” I do not know whether that is really right, but perhaps one could say that the roots of all my films come from Le Concert champêtre. What is the story of Le Concert champêtre? It is to become a figure in the Giorgione painting. To be a figure in the painting. You often see me entering the image in my films, but this is not about showing myself. That is very important. It is about disappearing into the frame. It is a way of disappearing. This is already there in my first film, Jeune femme à sa fenêtre lisant une lettre. You can take it as a fiction. And that fiction is jumping through the window: défenestration. You can jump through a window only once. You cannot do it twice. But you can enter the image and become part of it many times. That is what needs to be thought about in my films. Each time, it is a kind of défenestration. Again, you can go through a window, but only once. Entering the image and becoming part of it—which, for me, is the same thing—can be repeated. So perhaps it is easier now to understand what I mean by a kind of défenestration. It is not showing yourself, but disappearing. If you truly become part of the image, there is always a disappearance. If, by entering it, you destroy the relations between the lines that make the frame right, the image will disappear. If the image remains, it means that you have been taken by the image, and by the lines.
When I first worked with a digital movie camera, for De son appartement, I was using a friend’s camera. With digital, you can see the result on the small screen as soon as you have shot it. I saw a right frame and entered the image. It did not work. As soon as I had shot it, I could see that the image had disappeared. I made a second shot, and this time it worked. That became the short film Lettre à Roberto, which is now the last part of Festival. With Super 8, you have to wait. There are still people shooting Super 8, I think, but you have to send the film to the laboratory and wait about a week to get it back before you can see the result. What comes back may be nothing like what you wanted to see. Perhaps it is too early to say this, but I never threw anything away, especially the test shots. I am thinking of the second film I made, Venise n’existe pas. I made a shot just to test a new Super 8 camera. I put a postcard of Venice on the wall and tested the focus and so on. It was just a test, a reel lasting two and a half minutes. I had no reason to be disappointed, because it was only a test, and of course I had no intention of using it. In fact, it became the last part of Venise n’existe pas. From a conventional point of view, that reel should have been thrown away. But you should never throw anything away. If you remember the film, the last part is out of focus for perhaps a minute and a half, and then comes into focus with the sound of a window opening. I think it works quite well. It was the worst Super 8 reel I had, but it is the one that makes the film. Why am I telling you this?
INTERVIEWER
Speaking of that, you seem to shoot mostly by yourself.
ROUSSEAU
Always. Not mostly: always. There is no one behind the camera.
INTERVIEWER
What I want to ask about is the way you move within the frame. Your movements seem remarkably precise, taking place exactly where they need to. How were you able to achieve that?
ROUSSEAU
The answer would be the same as to another question about rightness: how the frame becomes right. It is unpredictable. I could say it is by chance. It is always by chance. But “chance” is not quite the right word for the rightness of the frame. If you are in front of the camera, you cannot be behind it, and you cannot see how your movement will look in the image. When I first used a digital camera, I put it on a tripod in a hotel and shot. I saw a frame and made the shot. Think of the scene that is now the last part of Festival and was first called Lettre à Roberto. I enter the shot. A minute after making that movement, I saw the result, and it looked bad. So I made the same movement again. Probably going to the window and opening the curtain. Most of the time, it is that kind of movement.
INTERVIEWER
I was particularly struck by what you said about the ideas of raccord and accord. Could you explain them in more detail?
ROUSSEAU
I do not know whether it is a concept. Raccord is what is always done in editing: tying a shot to the shot before it and the shot after it, using the image as a sign in writing. But the image does not accept that. What you see is no longer an image. An image cannot be a sign in writing. As soon as it is tied, it no longer exists. It disappears. It can remain an image only if it is free. Its relations must extend in every direction, all around the orbit. How can an image stand by itself if it is not tied to something else? It can, by some kind of gravity coming from a central point which is unable to be shown. But we know it exists, because the elements stand on the orbit around it. Being tied means following a linear description, as we do in writing, in literature. Poetry is different, because poetry makes things free. “Free” is also a verb: to free something. Poetry frees the words. Ordinary literature does not. So poetry is very close to what I have in mind when I speak of the difference between accord and raccord. Words are free in poetry. An image must also be free, or it is no longer an image. Someone who watches a film only waiting to understand a story, as though reading a story, cannot stand a film by Godard. Sometimes, as they leave the cinema, you hear them say, “What does it mean? What did he want to say? I did not understand anything.” They say they understood nothing. But they stayed in the cinema until the end. They did not leave. In some way, they were taken by the images. More generally, an image in itself has nothing to say. It says nothing. And what is important is that it shows nothing. An image shows nothing but itself. If it showed something, it would be a representation. But a true image is presence, not representation. That is always what art is. We can use Bresson’s distinction between cinema and cinematograph, in Notes sur le cinématographe. In this book, he distinguishes the two. If cinematograph is art, it can only be art, because it is made of images. This is connected with what I was just saying about the freedom of the image. We are weak before the image. Very weak. There are words by Cézanne that Bresson repeats in this book: “With every brushstroke, I risk my life. À chaque touche, je risque ma vie.” It is not comfortable at all. It is astonishing that people think they can deal with an image as though it were a sign in writing. If you preserve a true image, as Godard always does in his films, and of course Straub and Bresson too, it has nothing to do with representation. The image always goes through the motif.
INTERVIEWER
That is very striking. I think it is one of the most important perspectives on filmmaking and art in general.
ROUSSEAU
You have just used the word “perspective.” It is very closely connected with what I was saying about the motif. The motif is representation, and it is perspective. But it is not depth. To obtain depth, you have to forget perspective. That is how you go through the motif, and the depth becomes really deep. Your eyes are held there. It is as though you were disappearing, crossing the motif. When you truly see a Vermeer painting, when you have that vision, you forget the motif. You said “perspective,” and it brought this to mind. There is no depth unless you forget perspective. Perspective is representation; depth is presence. And you lose yourself. For me, this is the only way to speak of beauty. It is also something quite dangerous.
INTERVIEWER
During your visit to the Jeonju International Film Festival in 2003, you made Juste avant l’orage, filming an outdoor restaurant. What drew you to that place, and what inspired the film?
ROUSSEAU
I will tell you the whole story of that film. I had a retrospective in Jeonju in 2003. There were not as many films as there are now. I did not have my movie camera with me, or, of course, a tripod. But I felt like shooting. I asked if I could borrow a camera, and they immediately said yes. We went to where they kept the equipment, and they gave me a camera and a tripod. I took a taxi with the programmer who had organized the program of my films. She was sitting on my left, and I had the camera. As soon as I had it, holding it here, I shot. That became the last part of the film. It was the first shot I made. There was also someone who looked after me, and they called these people “angels.” I had my own angel, who was almost always beside me. We went to a restaurant in the old town. It was nice because the terrace was by the river. There were three of us sitting there: myself, my angel, and the camera on the tripod. I turned on the camera because I saw a right frame, a perfect frame. In front of us were three men who were finishing their lunch. One of them had drunk a little too much. They called a taxi, paid, and went to take it. As you have just seen, one of them had drunk so much that he could hardly stand up. Anyway, they left. What remained? The plates and everything else. The owner came from the right with a woman who, I think, was the owner’s mother. Instead of clearing the plates one by one, they took the whole table away. That is the custom there, of course. This is the second part of the film. The shot lasts about fifteen minutes. Five minutes with the three men, then five minutes with the woman walking back and forth, clearing and cleaning. The way she cleans is amazing. Fortunately, she does not pay much attention to the camera. As I said, it is as though the camera were the third person: myself, my angel, and the camera. She does not mind it. She used a broom to clean the ceiling. And there was a pile of red cushions. For me, this is a great moment in the film. The frame was perfect, but what happened was very dangerous. She moved three or four cushions somewhere else, and the frame was still as perfect as before. Then there are five minutes of the empty terrace. The last part, the coda of the film, is inside the taxi in the rain, with the windshield wipers moving. Jean-Marie Straub liked this film very much.
INTERVIEWER
That was just before Jean-Marie wanted to shoot Europa, right?
ROUSSEAU
Yes, Europa 2005 – 27 octobre.
INTERVIEWER
How did Jean-Marie come to make this film with you?
ROUSSEAU
This is connected with what happened in Paris: two young men died while being pursued by the police. They entered an electrical substation and died there.
Do you know Enrico Ghezzi? And the program Fuori Orario? It is a program on the Italian television channel RAI 3. They broadcast a retrospective of my work and bought the broadcast rights to several of my films. Enrico Ghezzi asked various filmmakers to make a film about Rossellini’s Europa ’51. Jean-Marie’s response was a kind of cinétract. He wanted to go to the place where the two young men had died, and he told me his intention. He did not want to make it on film, in the usual analog way. So he asked whether he could use my digital camera. That is why I went there with him and shot it. I made five takes. Danièle and Jean-Marie were in Rome, and I sent them the footage to ask which take they preferred. But they said they liked all five, and that all five should make up the film.
INTERVIEWER
During this retrospective, have you encountered anything that made you want to make a film?
ROUSSEAU
Until now, on this last day, the answer is simply no.3) Why? Because you really have to feel free in your mind to have the vision. You have to be taken by the vision. Having the vision means, a little like what I said earlier, that things disappear. Until now, I have not been in a position for things to disappear. I have been very pleased with what has happened, but there have been many things to do. In that state, you cannot see and feel an image, or have the vision. In French, “vision” can mean two things. The fact of seeing something is a vision. But if someone loses the ability to see correctly and sees something that does not exist, we also say, “Il a des visions”: “He is seeing visions.” That, in fact, is what an image is, in this strong sense. So first I have to settle down.
INTERVIEWER
Could you tell us a little about what you would like to make, what you are currently working on, or your future projects?
ROUSSEAU
Your last word—I would not go so far as to call it a terrible word, but it is absolutely the opposite of my way. I have never had any project.
INTERVIEWER
Ah, it was just a conventional expression…
ROUSSEAU
A convention? Do you know what that word means?
INTERVIEWER
Something prepared beforehand, in advance…
ROUSSEAU
Yes. So you already know that “project” is a terrible word. A project is something prepared in advance. A screenplay is also a project. But let me help you. No project.
But somewhere, anywhere, in fact—although not exactly anywhere—you can see. For instance, in Italy, where I have been many times, I feel like shooting without trying to understand why. Perhaps it is because of the light. The light on walls in Italy is completely different from the light on walls in Greece, for example. The light in Greece is too strong. I have been to Greece many, many times. I will go again at the end of August, but I will not shoot. The light is too strong. It is always like a sunburn in your mind. On my first trip to Greece, I was nineteen, and I turned twenty on a boat from Athens. I had a terrible sunburn on my body, but in my mind too. Italy is completely different. That is a kind of answer: it is not about having a project, but about having a feeling, having the vision where you are. And staying there is very important. Straub says something like this too. You have to really feel a place, to return to it again and again. You cannot simply arrive somewhere, perhaps because someone has asked you to shoot there, and immediately shoot without feeling anything. By staying in the same place, or returning to it, something strong may happen, and you may have the vision. So it is not a project, but a place to be. Nothing is decided beforehand; the place itself comes first. You have to return again and again. Then your imagination can work through the image you have begun to make. La Vallée close is a good example. I kept returning to the Enclosed Valley, and making the film took about ten years.
1) Jean-Claude Rousseau’s Le Concert champêtre, discussed in this interview, was published in English as The Pastoral Concert by Taufic in October 2026, translated by Kevin Weil. The edition also includes supplementary materials written by Rousseau and correspondence with Dominique Noguez, Marcel Hanoun, Jean-Marie Straub, and others.
2) Lastly, with Dernier arrêt pour le billet circulaire, Jean-Claude Rousseau delivers one of the most astonishing films in the competition. Once a prominent figure in Super 8 cinema, the filmmaker, who has since turned to digital, takes a place as his starting point: Lake Como, Italy. He sets up his camera here and there whenever a composition or motif catches his eye, returning in different seasons. Above all, however, he captures a ceaseless round: that of the ferry linking the area’s various lakeside resorts—Menaggio, Bellagio, Varenna, Cadenabbia.
From the landing stage and on deck, Rousseau captures rhythms, orchestrates a symphony of gestures, presences, and moments, and gradually brings forth an unprecedented form from a tourist destination that seemed condemned to cliché. This is a work without the slightest script, yet one that cannot quite be called a documentary either, resting instead on a profound faith in the image. Through its genuine emancipation from all dominant models, this film, like the dream of a solitary walker, was undoubtedly the most political work seen at FID this year.
— Mathieu Macheret, “Au FID Marseille, après l’appel au boycott du cinéaste israélien Nadav Lapid et son retrait, les films reprennent le terrain,” Le Monde, July 11, 2026.
3) Finally, Jean-Claude Rousseau made a film in Seoul which will be entitled “Ghosts”.