A Note from Me: Behind the SEEN

In April of 2021, more than one year after the outburst of the global pandemic, traffic was heavy around the Hong Kong Cultural Centre but with sparser people gathered. The camera shutter was pressed heavily, but all I could capture was emptiness and void. It was not long since I started practicing street photography, and not long since the streets of Hong Kong bid farewell to deafening slogans and pungent gas in the protest of 2019. Fatigue and depression enveloped the city, its people, and me.

When I revisited the photos two years later in the United States, I experienced a similar feeling to Roland Barthes when he stared at the photograph of Napoleon’s youngest brother. Naturally, the feeling was less dramatic—there was no eye in my photo that had ever looked at the Emperor. What is relatable for me is this gaze into a historical actuality, which one will assume is authentic. The photo is a portal to the immortality of its “time.” Similarly, I resonated with what Barthes wrote in “Camera Lucida” (though this might not be precisely what he meant) that when I “point a finger” to a certain photograph, I tend to introduce it with the word “see” or “look.” There seems to be a lack of description to describe my photos or anyone’s photos collectively without saying, “Did you see that contrast of the light and shadow? Look at those architectures framed as tombstones.” Meanwhile, another layer of thoughts added more complexity as I revisited my own photographic creation by taking up my original position of view. But I failed each time. Then I remembered the line by the protagonist (also a photographer) in Alice in the Cities, “It just never shows what you saw!” Therefore, my photos can never prove I am the witness to what is captured. As time went by, I gradually lost all connection to the actuality of the photos. I am their author, but I share nothing with what is in them. Eventually, the photos turned into a substitute for my real memories. The line in my film, SEEN, “or you only remember the photo,” ironically, is written for me.

Around that time, I also started studying film studies and was introduced to Godard. Watching his film for the first time wasn’t exactly a pleasant experience, especially since Notre Musique is the one I started with. Although I found it challenging to connect with the second and third sections of the film, the first chapter, the one about “hell,” shifts my perception to moving images. Godard illustrates the landscape of hell with found footage of war, violence, and death. The montage that cut to the piano music of Hans Otte left me with the impression of the ultimate destruction of the image (not only about moving images). This impression was reawakened this year when watching The Image Book. I saw the possibility of returning the moving image to still photography and paintings through over-saturation, detachment of the sound, and a rather stumbling but intentional montage. I saw how a filmmaker rejects the camera, detaches themselves from being present at the scene and admits not being the witness of anything that happened. An image can be merely an image. Montage can serve to build a non-narrative. It is a collage of images that leads to an untold theme. Doesn’t this align with the workings of my memory?

In the film SEEN, Han said “I don’t like movies. Moving image is discontinuous,” because he is only aware of the linearity created by montage in movies. He believes if our mind is an editing room, nobody can guarantee “we’ll fix it in the post.” Instead, the more we attempt to construct a continuous narrative with the ‘footage’ in our memories, the further we stray from an authentic experience due to the impossibility of linear memory. By saying “moving image is discontinuous,” Han is protesting against people’s assumption that moving image captures all the “time” and can construct a non-fragmented truth––everyone knows about the theory of 24 frames per second. Godard mentioned montage is a heart-beat that seeks in time. But the “time” here can never be recovered completely, just like the heart-beat is always discrete. Hence, the sentence “cutting a camera movement in four may prove more effective than keeping it as a shot” in “Montage, My Fine Care” makes more sense to me than ever. This is how my memories, and how Han’s memories work. And this is how I frame the memory in my film, SEEN––recover the stillness, the gap, and chaos of moving images, of our memories.

Then, here goes my manifesto regarding the image of memories (or should I say “the memory book”) in SEEN:

1. For photographs that represent past memories: avoid any single element standing out.
2. Therefore, do not invite the audience to “see” or “look” into anything specific in the photos, even when pointing a finger at them, since “ghosts” do not exist in them.
3. For moving images that represent past memories: treat them as found footage and break them into pieces. Be fragmented.
4. Montage. It is all about montage, no matter it’s moving image or still photography in this film. Photos will be presented in collage too, but, ultimately, they are captured with motion picture.

Going back to Notre Musique, I am glad I was not stopped by that film several years ago. Some later Godard’s films I watched that year opened another cinematic world to me, especially his early 1960s works. Among them, I tend to assume Pierrot le fou is an important––probably the most important inspiration––to SEEN. Starting with Pierrot le fou, I realized how much I can echo with this “cinephilia” in cinema, and the consciousness of the medium of cinema itself. With characters watching films, discussing films, acting, or living as if they are in a film, sometimes as if they are not in the film by talking to the audience or breaking the fourth wall, those metacommentaries of cinema challenge the make-believe world in the traditional filmmaking. Paradoxically, they bring more authenticity and truth to me, as I feel closer to Godard’s mindscape. From there, I began to try bringing this visibility of filmmaking to my film (I did this in several other films), wishing the audience would detach themselves from the story, hence, think about what characters and I want to voice. More importantly, I am eager to have my audience think about what is real, especially in SEEN. Because, deep down, both Han and Ann do not know what is real. I certainly do not have an answer, either. This ambiguous relationship of what is real and what is not (I avoid using “fake” as I do not think it is the opposite of real) in cinema, or maybe in life, haunts me forever. It is Godard’s films that provide me with an approach to experiment with this ambiguity. And it all starts with Anna Karina asking Jean-Paul Belmondo in the car, “Who are you talking to,” and “Pierrot” turns to us, saying, “The audience.”

It is also through Pierrot le fou, that I began to embrace the “freedom” in editing that one could break any rule of traditional montage. I stepped into the film industry as an editor and have been editing films ever since. So, when I say, “It is all about montage,” in that moment, I hold the utmost respect for Godard. His montage aesthetics in every film never fail to astound me (despite not being a fan of all his films). Apart from all the philosophical discussion around Godard’s montage I wrote above, in practice, I can hardly find another filmmaker who can master different episodes and fragments in all possible forms in a single film, through delicate montage. By learning from his montage, I intend also to be diverse in the styles of individual sequences in SEEN­––one could be an interview, a mime, a theatrical play, a long take, a rapid/jump cut, an analog footage, and even an animation. Hence, Han and Ann will constantly shift between two phases: the mundane of daily life and the spiritual world in mind, just like characters in Godard’s films always do. This shift will be realized mainly through sound design, including dialogues, voice-overs, and music. I do admire how Godard mismatches the music with the image, creating sound into a separate series itself. In SEEN, however, I will avoid doing so, partially due to my limited knowledge of music. But, primarily, isn’t there enough “displacement” in this film?

There would be thousands more words needed if I am going to explain the displacement in SEEN. And even more explanations are needed after I added the tension of Chinese and English—the language as a carrier of memories—into the screenplay. But in the end, only one sentence is necessary to conclude my incentives, and thus, this rationale. It is when Marianne, in Pierrot le fou, says to “Pierrot,” “you speak to me with words, but I look at you with feelings.” This part of Pierrot le fou will be shown in color in SEEN, as the only colored footage in this black-and-white film. Just to be intertextual to cinema, like Godard once did. To be intertextual to Godard’s cinema, like Godard once did as well.

Excerpt from Tianming Zhou’s MFA written thesis