[…] je place the premier film 8 mm in the bobine réceptrice, déroule the pellicule dans les débiteurs, select the good cadence of projection, je redoute que la puissance de la lampe halogen brûle the film. engine. Action.
Sébastien Berlendis, Seize lacs et une seule mer
[…] I place the first 8mm film into the take-up reel, wind the film into the projector, select the correct playback speed, fearing that the halogen lamp's power will burn the film. Motor. And action.
A discovery of visual material generates the novel. Seize lacs et une seule mer, similar to the last book by Christophe boltanskiIts author, Sébastien Berlendis, a philosophy teacher in Lyon, has already exhibited his own photographic works and later explains that he came to writing through the images, comparable to the texts of [author's name]. Célia HoudartBerlendis is one of the authors whose work has not yet been translated into German, a situation that could change with his Berlin novel. Return to Palerme From 2018 onwards, the narrator explored the Italian city of Palermo in search of his lost lover Délia, including an abandoned palazzo. This journey through time is always intertwined with the lost love, a melancholy oscillating between emotional images and absence. Even here, writing and memory are linked to the intermediality of film and photography.
You can also stay in the bathroom transforming into a black room. Long hours of work, long hours of night, high-quality skin, confused memories. Les negatives subissent l'usure du temps, certains, perméables à l'humidité, se couvrent de moistures. Caler l'agrandisseur, choose a papier baryté de petit format, disposer les trois bacs dans la baignoire, plonger les feuilles, augmenter le temps de révélation, creuser les blacks, laisser le blanc manger les bords de l'image, la mécanique du tirage ne s'oublie pas, et la photographie A fois fixée rappelle, a court instant, the present du gesture qui l'a produite. The work of development rejoices in the film of a vivacious, mélange de plein et de vide, d'inspiration, d'expiration. I destroy the films at the end of the day.
Sébastien Berlendis, Return to Palerme
Today I'm locking myself in the bathroom, which has transformed into a dark space. Eight hours of work, eight hours of sleep, nausea, jumbled memories. The negatives are suffering from the wear and tear of time; some are permeable to moisture and covered in mold. Setting up the enlarger, choosing a small-format baryta paper, placing the three trays in the tank, immersing the sheets, extending the development time, revealing the blackness, the consuming of the white at the edges of the image—the mechanics of the printing process are unforgettable, and once the photograph is fixed, it recalls, for a brief moment, the presence of the gesture that brought it about. The development process reenacts the film of a life, a mixture of fullness and emptiness, of inspiration and extinction. I will destroy the films at the end of the day.
The penultimate book by Berlendis, The adolescent seasons from 2020, was also a didactic project about memory:
Nous avons étudié un texte à la lisière de la philosophy et de la littérature. Pour expliquer notre rapport au temps, notre désir de le tenir, the author prenait l'exemple de la photography. The image, écrit-il, is not content in the frame of a face, in a corps, in a separate space, in a living area, in a room, in a frame in a time, in a moment. […] Je raconte l'histoire de ce young garçon qui perd la mémoire. Bientôt il ne pourra garder qu'un seul souvenir, dernier souvenir qu'il peut néanmoins choisir. I propose aux élèves de se mettre à la place du young garçon et d'écrire sur leurs plus beaux papiers le souvenir qu'ils souhaiteraient conserver.
Sébastien Berlendis, The adolescent seasons
We studied a text at the intersection of philosophy and literature. To explain our relationship to time, our desire to capture it, the author uses the example of photography. The image, he wrote, is not content with merely framing a face or a body; it does not simply enclose a space, a landscape, a room; it frames a time, immortalizes a moment. […] I tell the story of a young boy who is losing his memory. Soon he will only be able to retain one memory, the last one he can choose. I suggest that the students put themselves in the boy's position and, on their best paper, write down the memory they would like to keep.
Two years later, the narrator reports at the end, he read the students' sealed texts, even called some of them, and he himself began to write such short memoirs, which comprise the book. The adolescent seasons will make up. One of them takes, like Seize lacs et une seule mer Berlin's history reflected in its landscape: In viewing a photograph of himself as a young man, he reads his farewell to childhood, in an "encounter with history, one thousand two hundred kilometers further east in Europe". 1 In the rubble hill of West Berlin, named after the Teufelssee (Devil's Lake), lie the unfinished remains of the utopian world capital Germania, specifically the military engineering faculty. This excerpt from a school trip, a recollection based on a photograph taken by the teacher, already hints at the relationship between landscape exploration, historical contemplation, and self-reflection that defines Berlendis's subsequent summer book about Berlin from 2021:
Strange hills, artificial, this is the guide that explains, cent vingt mètres de haut, elle domine Berlin et the Nord de Grunewald, the grand bois vert de la ville. Teufelsberg, la montagne du diable, tel est son nom, montagne de gravats, de béton concassé, construite après la Deuxième Guerre ; je comprends que nous marchons sur les ruines de Berlin. Elle n'est pas la seule à avoir été érigée ainsi ; ce qui surprend et la distingue de ses sisters, this is what a former military university is. Log house indestructible, elle demeure là, inentamée, sous nos pieds. Il suffirait de casser la neige et la glace, ou attendre l'été, arracher les herbes hautes, gratter, creuser la terre pour qu'elle apparaisse. Énigmatiques également les domes radars qui couronnet Teufelsberg. […]
The froid encore lorsque nous descendons pour rejoindre Teufelssee, the lac en contrebas, dans un creux, au milieu des bois. À new, the snow and the ice napped the surface of the water, j'aimerais revenir l'été.
Sébastien Berlendis, The adolescent seasons
A strange, more artificial Teufelsberg, the guidebook explains, is a hill 120 meters high, dominating Berlin and the northern part of the Grunewald, the city's large green forest. la montagne du diable, That's its name, a mountain of rubble, of shattered concrete, piled up after the Second World War; I realize that we are walking on the ruins of Berlin. It is not the only hill created in this way. What is surprising and distinguishes it from its siblings What distinguishes it is that it is a former military university. It is an indestructible blockhouse, standing untouched beneath our feet. All we have to do is clear the snow and ice, or wait for summer, pull up the tall grass, scrape and dig the earth until it appears. The radar domes that crown Teufelsberg are also enigmatic. […]
The cold returned as we descended to the Devil's Lake, nestled in a hollow in the middle of the forest. Here too, snow and ice covered the water's surface; I would love to come back in summer.
The narrator will encounter the Devil's Lake in Seize lacs et une mer as his favorite among the lakes he visited. The summer book follows a woman's journey from lake to lake, painting an almost bucolic picture of Berlin. White Lake. Long Lake. Müggelsee. Wannsee. Devil's Lake. This time, the visit to the lakes follows a different logic, namely the Super 8 film footage of Inna Helm that was found:
Sur les images du film, Inna Helm ne descend pas les marches d'escalier du strandbad car celui-ci n'existe pas ; The lake, enchâssé in the forest, is also sauvages and secrets. À peine un carré minuscule de sable gris réservé aux families with children; Les garçons ou les filles seules, les young couples posent leurs draps de bain à l'écart des rives, dans les champs d'herbes hautes. Les corps nus et vêtus se mélangent dans le calme et la douceur characteristics des lacs Berlinois. Amoureux des bords de mer varois, des rivages italiens, this tranquillité, au départ, me désarçonnait - comment dorénavant pourrais-je m'en priver.
Je marche autour du lac, j'effectue ce qu'ici les habitués nomment la ronde de clôture, je reconnais le lieu de la séquence du film. Sur la rive sud, en retrait du lac, sous les branches des saules, Inna Helm ôte son débardeur, expose son dos blanc et fin, the plan se appointments au moment où elle esquisse un movement en direction de celui ou de celle qui la films. I'm talking about the cadre, I'm reproducing, I'm taking photos of the space and I'm interrogating: I'm talking about these images. Three other plans fixes the lac complètent la sequence.
Sébastien Berlendis, Seize lacs et une seule mer
In the film footage, Inna Helm doesn't descend the steps of the lido, because it doesn't exist; the lake, enclosed by the forest, is one of the wildest and most secluded. Only a tiny patch of gray sand is reserved for families with children; boys or single girls, young couples lay their towels away from the shore, in meadows of tall grass. Naked and clothed bodies mingle in the peace and tranquility characteristic of Berlin's lakes. As a lover of the Var's Mediterranean coast and the Italian beaches, I was initially dismayed by this tranquility—how could I ever live without it?
I walk around the lake, doing what the regulars here call the final lap, and recognize the location of the film sequence. On the south shore, set back from the lake, beneath the willow branches, Inna Helm takes off her tank top, revealing her thin, white back. The shot ends as she makes a movement toward the person filming. I try to remember the framing, I recreate it, I take two photos of the area, and I wonder: What do I do with these empty images? Three more stills of the lake complete the sequence.
The visual logic of the search for clues remains open. Inna is like a contemporary Beatrice, a phantom-like guide from the past, while the exiled Syrian filmmaker Leyla accompanies him in a very real way. Frank Beauvais summarizes the film-aesthetic and musical allusions of the book:Sixteen lakes and a sea It takes the reader on a journey that begins with the discovery of two Super 8 films, between Berlin and France, between cinema and photography, and casually mentions Chantal Akerman and Bill Callahan in poetic, fluid, and unemotional prose. A highly recommended read in which the spirits of Dorrit Weixler and Bruno Kastner also fleetingly encounter one another. 2
In The world of books Fabrice Gabriel rejected the genre classification of the book as a novel, speaking of a geology of writing, of the genealogy of a history-drenched landscape, but also emphasizing that this flânerie is an ironic play with Berlin mythologemes. 3 – Jérôme Delclos's excellent review goes deeper, pointing to Berlendis's iconographic program as well as the obvious allusions to the Orpheus-Eurydice story. 4 Not only in the gesture of the head turned back, but also in the shared cinema visit with the (falling asleep) filmmaker Leyla of Jean-Marie Straub's Orpheus film. L'Inconsolable The author draws our attention to this through Cesare Pavese's film text. Here, Orpheus consciously chooses a life without Eurydice. Orpheus's lament is self-referential: he is now listening to himself.
“I could hear the rustle of her footsteps behind me. But I was still down there, and I was cold. I thought that one day I would have to return there, that what had been would be again. I thought of life with her as it had been; that it would be over once more. What has been, will be. I thought of the cold, the emptiness I had traversed, and that she carried in her bones, in her marrow, in her blood. Was life worth living again? I pondered this and glanced at the day. Then I said, ‘So be it,’ and turned away. Eurydice vanished, like a candle going out.” 5So is Seize lacs et une seule mer Berlendis' work features an important variation on his themes. Loss and memory, moving image and stillness, film and photography are presented here in a way that is both subjective and historically significant, as re-enactments of film sequences, as a summery Berlin book from lake to lake.
Six minutes and three seconds of images after temps ; pourtant, entre chaque séquence, a carton de couleur crème indique les jours et les mois de l'été 2016, deux années me séparent donc de ces estivales et d'Inna Helm – les enveloppes qui contenaient le trésor mentionnaient ce nom. Je rembobine, je regarde les deux films plusieurs fois. Six sequences, des plans presque exclusivement fixes de durées inégales, rarement brefs, celui ou celle qui films laisse le temps se déployer. Six sequences that correspond, ainsi les cartons le précisent, à six lacs, Berlinois je présume ou quelque peu éloignés de la ville. The cadre ne change pas, les plans sont pour la plupart larges and capturent the silhouette of Inna Helm de dos. The young woman descends les marches des établissements balnéaires, elle se fige, regarde l'horizon. Lorsque the lac present a décor plus sauvage, lorsqu'il se cache par exemple au coeur d'un bois, Inna advance vers l'eau, maillot une pièce bleu électrique, enroulé parfois jusqu'aux hanches, elle écarte les branches des aulnes ou des saules, the camera suit son movement, approach sa nuque ; A second recapitulation, the tour of the face, the dévoilement of the face lasts for a second. Arrête la bande six fois, je note le nom des lacs, je photographie le visage d'Inna et ses poses immobiles.
Sébastien Berlendis, Seize lacs et une seule mer
Six minutes and thirty seconds of timeless footage, yet between each sequence, a cream-colored map displays the days and months of the summer of 2016. Two years separate me from these summer scenes and from Inna Helm—her name was printed on the envelopes containing the treasure. I rewind and watch both films several times. In six sequences, almost exclusively still images of varying lengths, rarely short, the person filming allows time to unfold. Six sequences that, as the boxes suggest, correspond to six lakes—Berlin lakes, I assume, or lakes located somewhat further from the city. The framing remains constant; the shots are mostly wide and capture Inna Helm's silhouette from behind. The young woman descends the steps of the bathing establishment, shivering, and gazes at the horizon. When the lake offers a wilder backdrop, when it's hidden, for example, in the heart of a forest, Inna strides towards the water, wearing an electrifying blue one-piece swimsuit, sometimes rolled up to her hips. She parts the branches of alders or willows, the camera following her movement, approaching her neck; only once does she turn her head, the unveiling of her face lasting barely a second. I pause the tape six times, noting the names of the lakes, photographing Inna's face and her motionless poses.
This article is written in German and can be found at https://rentree.de. Automatic translations into English and French are available. English, French.
Notes- “L'excitation encore pendant la nuit avant notre rencontre avec l'histoire mille deux cents kilometers plus à l'est de l'Europe.”>>>
- "Seize lacs et une seule mer Promène son lecteur, à partir de la découverte deux films super 8, entre Berlin et la France, cinéma et photography, évoquant au passage bien Chantal Akerman que Bill Callahan in a prose fluid poetry and dépourvue d'afféteries. A lecture fortement recommandée où l'on croise also fugacement les fantômes de Dorrit Weixler and Bruno Kastner.” Frank Beauvais on the Facebook Profile the author>>>
- "Une flânerie géographique, surtout, mêlant effet de réel et poésie d'un imaginaire ancien, geologie de l'écriture et généalogie d'un paysage saturé d'histoires. Observateur fin et réveur, Berlendis détourne les clichés d'une certaine mythologie Berlinoise pour en faire comme le film d'une pure révélation sensitive." Fabrice Gabriel, “Berlin ville d'eau”, The world of books, October 28, 2021.>>>
- Jérôme Delclos, “Les entrelacs de Sébastien Berlendis”, Le Matricule des Anges, no. 227 , October 2021.>>>
- "Mi sentivo all spalle il fruscìo del suo passo. Ma io ero ancora laggiù e avevo addosso quel freddo. Pensavo che a giorno avrei dovuto tornarci, che ciò ch'è stato sarà ancora. Pensavo alla vita con lei, com'era prima; che un'altra volta sarebbe finished finita” e mi Voltai. Euridice scomparve come si spegne una candela.” Cesare Pavese, L'inconsolabile>>>
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