The notion "cinematographic situation" arises from the juxtaposition of Guy Debord's Situationist theories and Robert Bresson's Cinematographer. It is therefore a conceptual tool intended to work as a place of relationships between books and films of both. To do so, it starts from the fundamental contrast between situation-cinematographer and cinema-spectacle, and proceeds to compare characteristic features of each of the resulting poles.
In order to integrate into a single body theoretical and methodological disciplines as diverse as sociology, sociological theory, sociology of art, communication, film theory or film analysis, we adopt a sociological perspective that can be described as constructionist, critical, comprehensive, or reflexive, and apply qualitative methodologies permanently adapted to the object of study, such as discourse analysis from formal, stylistic, iconographic, or theoretical points of view.
The films Hurlements en faveur de Sade (1952), Sur le passage de quelques personnes à travers une assez courte unité de temps (1959), Critique de la séparation (1961), La Société du spectacle (1973), Réfutation de tous les judgements, tant élogieux qu’hostiles, qui ont été jusqu’ici portés sur le film « La Société du spectacle » (1975), In girum imus nocte et consumimur igni (1978), and books La Société du spectacle (1967), In girum imus nocte et consumimur igni (1978), Œuvres cinématographiques complètes (1978), Commentaires sur la société du spectacle (1990), along with many other articles and writings of Debord, provide the base for situations.
The films Les Anges du péché (1943), Les dames du Bois de Boulogne (1945), Journal d'un curé de campagne (1951), Un condamné à mort s'est échappé ou Le vent souffle où il veut (1956), Pickpocket (1959), Procès de Jeanne d'Arc (1962), Au hasard Balthazar (1966), Mouchette (1967), Une femme douce (1969), Quatre nuits d'un rêveur (1971), Lancelot du Lac (1974), Le diable probablement (1977), L'argent (1983), the book Notes sur le Cinématographe (1975), along with many other Bresson interviews and monographs, provide the base for cinematographer.
These books and films serve then as a main base or starting point for a work that not intended to focus on the figures of Debord or Bresson, but on something different, something largely unknown beyond cinematic spectacle, something called cinematographic situations. This has to do with the mysterious links set within the film and its interlocutor, far beyond the theoretical and methodological framework used along the thesis. Therefore this thesis remains necessarily trapped in conceptual and operational boundaries, to be enlarged and overwhelmed in future researches. At the same time, it's true these same limits have proven to be useful to guide this and other midterm and longterm wider research projects.
In his book on transcendental style in film, Paul Schrader talks about a cinematic style that develops over time in three steps. His research does not cover Bresson's entire filmography, and follows the track of Bazin and Sontag writings. Anyway it provides a powerful three-step structure analysis, improvable by subsequent contributions, such as Arnaud's discussions on suspensions in presentation of the everyday, Reader's cultural studies specifically focusing in disparity, or the materialist aspects of ecstasy described by Zunzunegui.
From an undisciplinar and undisciplined perspective, the works of Debord charge against twentieth century political and artistic predecessor avant-garde movements, for not having been able to overcome the abysms that dissociate life and politics, life and art, life and cinematography. Unbridgeable gaps between theory and practice, that certain libertarians, councilists, dadaists, surrealists, lettrists, and situationists have recurrently condemned.
Indisciplinar cinematographic style and perspective, to talk about works that take as their starting point careful observation of everyday life, a world of common sense where everything goes unnoticed. Works that gradually suggest a need of change, arising from disparity or separation promoted by environment. Human systems where strange invisible forces mediate, where unifying gestures try to lead to ecstasy situations, where this confrontation drives to a conclusion.
It is not about producing new kinds of religious or revolutionary dogmas, but about promoting creation of cinematographic situations and experienced situations in general, to encourage responses to filmic and thus social environments, to seek unification of cinematic experiences and, by extension, lived experiences. To put together everyday and cinematographic activity, as means to solve if only momentarily problems of separation.
