F.J. Ossang: Convulsive Beauties

F.J. Ossang, a writer, musician and director born in 1956, has developed a polymorphic and unique body of work with a common poetic thread. Jean-Jacques Manzanera looks back on his films (only five feature films since 1984) and highlights their relationship to writing and music.

Despite giving us the dazzling trajectories of Vigo, Epstein, Cocteau and Franju, one can hardly say that French cinema is foremost characterised by its poetic inclination. Embarking on this path is risky, as demonstrated by the persistent ignorance surrounding the protean body of work that F.J. Ossang has been able to build up, step by step. After the release of 9 Fingers (2018), which was awarded in Locarno, we have been reminded of him by publications of poetic collections (1), the publication of a beautiful essay about him by Michèle Collery (2) and a return to cinema via, on the one hand, the restoration of his only full-colour film, Doctor Chance (1997), also in Locarno, and on the other hand, the Trilogie F.J. Ossang, the rerelease of three feature films, on August 24th. (3) Creating whatever the price, whatever the path. This seems to be the filmmaker’s inner watchword when he seeks “A syntax from whence the mystery and the Questions make a pure world/ I mean pure in the sense of worked or combusting ore.” (4)

When we think of creation according to Ossang, we naturally think foremost of the filmmaker because, over the course of five feature films and a few short films, he has been able to chart a course that remains unparalleled, here or elsewhere. At a time when so many filmmakers hide their deep academicism behind a proudly rumpled aesthetic, an extended shot that is a little too carefully calculated, a supposedly post-modern referential mishmash that aspires to prizes and selections at festivals, it is reassuring to note that others “film the world that speed engenders and immerse themselves in the matter of colours and the event of sensations.” (5) In short, whilst some seek modernity, others breathe it naturally.

RICH POETIC MATRIX

Indeed, the immediately striking thing about cinema according to Ossang is the love of matter in the broadest sense: words spoken or written, sound textures as complex as they are sophisticated, shots that are alternately grainy, as if stolen on the spot, of a beautiful expressionist elegance, or located at the boundaries of an abstract purity. If we consider his second feature film, Treasure of the Bitch Island (1990), we can see that there is already a rich poetic matrix in place from the very first sequences. The credits in white lettering on a black background, accompanied by a heady hum, give way to an iris shot opening onto a white, irradiated background where only the faces of two men stand out. Whilst a reverse tracking shot makes it possible to discover this unreal space, the first, looking haggard, sits on a bed listening to the complicated explanations the other, who is offering him a risky deal that would allow him to get out with this mysterious promise as a viaticum: “You will have every means to avert disorder.” The staging of the simulated death of Feodor Aldellio (Diogo Dória, one of Manoel de Oliveira’s favourite actors) engenders a sequence of shots that seem to come straight out of

some forgotten silent masterpiece, such is the expressive beauty of an insert on an eye, a plane taking off in a stormy sky, a radiant sun bursting through clouds, a closeup shot circling around the face of a modern Ophelia emerging from the milky water, a tracking shot of a man like a shadow puppet on a white background in a tunnel that frames him in black…

But this would be neglecting the musical score composed by Ossang’s band, the Messageros Killer Boys, midway between punk and the industrial scene. Music, a fundamental creative activity that predated his experience of cinema, evolved from writing in the late 1970s and gave rise to the desire for cinema to the point of making him say: “I think I learned more about directing from rock’n’roll than from Idhec. (6) A rock’n’roll band is four or five people who must work together towards a single energy to perform the ceremony of the god Chaos and electricity. It has a lot to do with the process of directing a film.” Rather than a pure soundtrack, it might be described as a sound environment, worthy of the films of David Lynch. In her recent essay, Michèle Collery speaks very rightly of “a kind of relay that conveys its own image, since the ear is profound and inventive whereas the eye (in general) remains superficial (Bresson).” The hyperbolic roar of an airplane taking off, the extraterrestrial propulsion of a helicopter, the mixing of chainsaw engines and percussion upon arrival on the famous Bitch Islands, where a sign announces: “You are in the land of the dead.”

F.J. Ossang certainly loves sound and music but he was unable to resist the pleasure of preserving the onscreen magic of this clause which was indispensable in the silent era, and which was regularly reused by Jean-Luc Godard. An avid reader of Guy Debord and Arthur Cravan, he is fascinated by on-screen writing, not only as a layer of stimulating language but also as a pure aesthetic motif in itself. In this rare cinematic gesture, we can recognise the young creator of the magazine Cée (7), the diarist of Les 59 Jours (8) whose graphic cover flirts with futurism, and the scrupulous poet who reflects with his editors on the best possible layout. Despite being a musician and a filmmaker, Ossang lives in poetry, be it written, filmed, or played by his band. His writings—far from having become a distant satellite of cinema—retain a central place in his creative process, to the point of making him say:

“Poetry owes nothing—its dispersed nature has to do with an Accursed Share which is beyond time, which exceeds the senses—casts aspersions on the evidence discovered just under the water—” (9)

COMPANEROS

Of course, Ossang’s cinema also likes to put text in the mouths of the characters, or simply onto glowing images with strong contrasts, with the aim of reinforcing their hypnotic beauty. This is not without evoking the backand-forth between poetry and cinema that Pasolini used to use. In a few moments, Treasure of the Bitch Island unfolds a narrative worthy of a film noir to introduce the members of the commando unit on a mission on the Bitch Islands, followed by a kind of ode that accompanies the contemplation of the silent heroine. Later, Bormane, one of the main characters, utters an obsessive monologue whose vocal and verbal accents are reminiscent of Artaud, but an Artaud that we would accompany physically on the other side. Hence the importance of finding trustworthy “accomplices.” Ossang prepares a film as others might foment a plot or an insurrection. We might think of the cinematographers, such as Darius Khondji and Gleb Teleshov, but the actor, of course, remains the first of these companeros. Starting with Elvire, the faithful muse, the sublime femme fatale who accompanies the heroes of Doctor Chance, Dharma Guns and 9 Fingers to the end of their journeys. The actors speak Ossang’s

Concert des MKB-Fraction provisoire (Messageros Killers Boys). Au micro at the mic: F.J. Ossang

words, sometimes to the point of appropriating his identifiable phrasing like so many alter egos who relive, in a recomposed world, the couple’s real wanderings all over the globe. And this is one of the important elements of this itinerary, which is a constant work in progress, and which remains one of the best kept secrets of French cinema: between two films, F.J. Ossang and Elvire constantly feed on the vibration of the world, seeking to understand how it is doing in order to better reconstruct its topography and its history in dark narratives abounding in film noir, decadent SF, and diffuse fantasy atmospheres. Doctor Chance deploys its superb palette in a reinvented Chile, Sky’s Black Out! (2008) resembles a poetic manifesto capable of reviving the great Soviet cinema on home soil, whereas Dharma Guns (2010) and 9 Fingers explore the borders of Portugal like a terra incognita. Thus, according to Collery, “the psychogeography of the Ossanguian territories operates outside the simulacra of daily life, the places of consumption and the society of the spectacle.”

The convulsive beauty of creation according to Ossang must be understood as a poetic consolation in the face of the bitter observation inspired by the beginning of our century, already overtaken by the demons of the previous one: “The times of men change so quickly that we have little or no control over them.” (10) ■

Translation: Juliet Powys

1 In 2021, we were able to discover two collections of poetry by F.J. Ossang, Fin d’empire (Le corridor bleu), followed by le Mémoire Lucien Dolchor (Pariah). Génération néant (1993)—one of his most beautiful texts—will soon be republished by Al Dante. 2 Michèle Collery, F.J. Ossang. Cinéaste à la lettre, Deep Red, 2021. 3 L’Affaire des divisions Morituri (1984), Treasure of the Bitch Island (1990) and Doctor Chance (1997). 4 In “Corps nihilistes,” the first section of the Fin d’empire collection. 5 In “F.J. Ossang, le grand style insurrectionnel,” preface by Nicole Brenez to F.J. Ossang, films et documents, the booklet accompanying the DVD set published by Potemkine in 2011. 6 The Institut des Hautes Études Cinématographiques, now the Fémis, the École Nationale Supérieure des Métiers de l’Image et du Son. 7 Review published between 1977 and 1979, in co-edition with Christian Bourgois. It featured texts by William S. Burroughs and Claude Pélieu, amongst others. 8 Les 59 Jours (Diabase, 1999) is a kind of poetic prose diary written in parallel with the Chilean shooting of Doctor Chance. 9 In “Vae volte,” the fourth section of the Fin d’empire collection. 10 In Le Mémoire Lucien Dolchor.

Jean-Jacques Manzanera is a professor and critic. He has collaborated on books on Bruno Dumont, Pier Paolo Pasolini and Roman Polanski.