Western, famille et communisme

Western, famille et communisme was shot in Iran by a French man with his family in a camping-car. The mother is a photographer. The father dreams of westerns. Between their children’s games and their acting, the daughters sense the possibilities of a world yet to be invented, whereas in France, at the same time, the night is rising. Beginning with the clamour of Parisian protests alternated with the political words of Iranian activists, the film soon approaches other destinations: the world of the family community conceived of as the original political cell, and the world of a fantasised western where the confrontation between father and daughters would be re-enacted. Saint Luke, Lacan, Rilke, Blanqui – among others – are summoned to participate in this game, which questions and inverses the symbols of authority and power. Progressively confined to the only family community, the trip continues via a delicate montage of visual and sound impressions, which compose a travelogue with no landmarks or directions. Through the eye of the one who is filming, artistic and political gestures are continuously intermingled and confronted: “from the family to politics” (as the filmmaker’s voice-over says). This essay-film, unlike family- or vacation-films, plays with disruptions and different scales of observation – from the nation to the family, from the militant group to the individual – to question different forms of politics. (Charlotte Garson)