Nationalité: Immigré
A translation of director Sidney Sokhona's 1976 Cahiers du Cinéma interview
On the occasion of Anthology Film Archives’ online presentation of Sidney Sokhona’s remarkable film, available to stream through this Saturday, it’ll be Nationalité: Immigré week here. Below is the first half of my translation of the long interview Sokhona gave to Serge Daney, Serge Le Péron, and Jean-Pierre Oudart as part of the magazine’s dossier on the film in issue no. 265. The second half will follow tomorrow. (My apologies in advance for any infelicities of translation.) A translation of Daney’s essay on the film can be found here. On Friday, I’ll have some brief thoughts of my own on the film.
Cahiers: Could you give us a brief overview of the history of your film, from the initial conception of the scenario through to its realization?
Sokhona: The film as it is has next to nothing to do with the old script. Back then, I just absolutely wanted to make something. I met Rouch and told him that I wanted to make a little film about immigration. He asked me for a synopsis. I wanted to make a fiction film, but at that time (around 1964-65), this was impossible. Since then, I’ve changed a great deal, both as a person and in my relation to the earlier scenario. In 1970, I became a tenant of the Foyer Riquet, where there was a rent strike on. The idea, then, became to make a film about this strike. We didn’t have any money: all the technicians who worked on the film did it for free, in their spare time. Same thing with the actors and the workers who appear in the film. And I played myself: I would’ve preferred an actor, but I couldn’t expect that of someone without paying him.
Cahiers: In the original scenario, were you as directly involved [i.e., as the star] as you became in the film?
Sokhona: No, I wanted to make a purely fictional film, with actors. I didn’t have any interest in appearing as an actor, I just wanted to be concerned with what was going on behind the camera.
Cahiers: Could you tell us more about the difference between the project as it was conceived around 1967 and the film as it is today?
Sokhona: The biggest difference, to my mind, is the rent strike. In 1967, “militant” cinema wasn’t very developed yet. Like any immigrant, I was initially drawn to classic commercial cinema, the cinema of the Grands Boulevards. But over two years of participating in this rent strike, I changed quite a lot. The other film would’ve recounted the difficulties of arriving in France. It might have been interesting, but it wouldn’t have had the clear political stance of Nationalité: Immigré.
In this film, I initially wanted to deal only with the rent strike at Foyer Riquet: the problems between old and young, between people who speak different languages, etc. But over the two years of the strike, these became obsolete. It was necessary to sustain the strike, not to break the unity born out of that struggle. There was also, for the film, the problem of money. I was a little overwhelmed, since everyone there was relocated before I had time to finish the film. This is what led me, at the end of 1974 and into 1975, to shoot some other things to hold the film together.
Cahiers: How long altogether did it take to make the film?
Sokhona: The project began in 1970, with the aid of GREC [Le Groupe de recherches et d'essais cinématographiques]. But we started shooting the first scene without knowing if we’d ultimately be making a ten-minute film, for lack of funds. We kept on shooting in 1972, then in 1973, 1974, 1975. At the time, I was working as a telephone operator, earning 2000 francs per month. This meant I had to work two, three, or even four months just to be able to shoot a single sequence. This is what made the shoot as long as it was. But everyone who was involved with the film was on board with this approach; they knew they weren’t going to be paid. We were able to finish the film a little ahead of schedule because Rouch lent us his editing room, and his editor would come around to work on the film in his spare time.
As far as equipment, the faculty at Vincennes lent us a camera for a week. Beyond that, we had to rent equipment for around 600 francs a day (with an additional 2000 francs as a deposit).
Cahiers: At the time, had you seen any films that dealt with immigration? And have you since?
Sokhona: I’ve seen plenty. Before shooting Nationalité: Immigré, I had worked on a film by Med Hondo, Les Bicots Nègres. Earlier, I’d seen Soleil Ô, which I discussed with Hondo, and he agreed with my criticisms of it. He told me he wanted to make a film covering the whole history of immigration, and I worked with him on several sequences of that. Otherwise, I’d seen films on immigration which were interesting for the simple fact that they dealt with the subject. But with respect to the immigrant audience these films sought, they had a flaw, which was that they always presented a grand commentary that only a small percentage of the workers in the audience could actually follow. This is what led to me to introduce a bit of fiction, so that even those who couldn’t follow along with the commentary could follow along with the image.
Cahiers: Did the strikers offer any explicit demands regarding the film?
Sokhona: There was no demand from the workers. Some of them didn’t even want the shoot to happen. This was because [over the course of the strike] we saw various television crews and journalists turn up, who all had a specific image of immigration in mind. So, during the shoot, when the residents saw a French crew with me, they thought they’d just used me to get into the building. Some of the workers refused to be filmed. I wasn’t going to film them secretly, and I didn’t insist. Now, some of them who have seen the film regret that they refused to participate, since it would’ve allowed for more concrete examples. To me, it’s a very positive thing that they would say that. So you see, the idea came from me, at least initially. For some scenes, we had to have discussions which lasted three or four days before we could start to shoot. For example, with the scene shot at the foyer itself, they refused to be filmed in their beds, because they said, “the French are going to believe that we’re happy to be in this shit,” things like that. So there was a discussion, and they said, “we didn’t bring these slums from Africa, we found them here.” It was all discussed. This also shows the unequal level of awareness among immigrants: many couldn’t see any need for the film. I’d passed through the same experience when I was under the influence of the big commercial cinema. These are the films most immigrants see, karate films, things like that. These films are even screened by the Prefecture in the slums themselves.
Cahiers: Could you say more than about that: how the Prefecture takes control of the planning [of activities] in the slums?
Sokhona: The foyer where I am, the new Foyer Riquet, was built by a private firm and is managed by the Prefecture—this is the case with most new foyers, by the way. And they put on cultural events there. Every Saturday there’s something: a group of magicians, a film screening. So far I’ve been to three screenings: Gants de cuir contre karaté, Il était une fois Sabata, and Shaft, a film starring a Black American actor. These are all films shot on 35mm, which the Prefecture has 16mm copies of that they screen in the foyers for free. There were some North African workers who made a list of films that they wanted to see: we want this or that Algerian film. But the Prefecture has its own programming. It seems they have 14 million old francs, just for putting on programming around Paris. One African film was banned because it got a good review in Liberation. The guy who the Prefecture pays to put these on is French, he hadn’t seen the film, he thought it was a documentary.
Cahiers: During the discussion on July 14, someone from the audience told you, “Your film is too intellectual…”
Sokhona: I don’t share that point of view. First off, I’m not an intellectual myself. What’s important to recognize is that the Prefecture is trying to condition immigrants in the foyers, with all these free films, right in their homes. For me, the only way to fight against this type of projection is to screen other films, in other foyers, and then discuss them afterwards. Their reactions aren’t the same as after a karate film. Immigrants are going to go out of their way to see Nationalité: Immigré at the Bastille, because they’re already being conditioned at home, free of charge. And so our plan is to travel from foyer to foyer, to show the film on Saturdays and Sundays.
Cahiers: Have you done this yet?
Sokhona: No. We wanted to do a screening at the Foyer Riquet, but the Prefecture wouldn’t allow it, because we didn’t have our visa de censure yet. There have been private screenings for immigrants. They haven’t offered any serious criticisms of the film yet, but every time I end up trying to explain the reason for this or that scene. Otherwise, it’s audiences like July 14, where the majority is French, and there too, we have a debate every night. The film generally gives way to other things related to the current problems around immigration.
Cahiers: At Vincennes, there were people who asked, “Why make a film about immigration which doesn’t convey a general or global idea [of the subject]?”
Sokhona: I avoided posing this type of problem for two reasons. First, we had to take into account the level of awareness of the immigrants themselves. What slogans could we use, what tone? It’s true that we don’t look much from the African side at the question, “Why immigration?” But first off, we didn’t have the means to go there. And anyway, setting someone in front of the camera to explain it, even if they offered a clear analysis, this isn’t what the immigrants would have wanted. They would prefer precise images. We have to begin with very simple things and not have any illusions: awareness among immigrants is quite limited, only a minority reflects on these problems. Even after the Foyer Riquet strike, the level of consciousness wasn’t automatically raised. As soon as everyone was rehoused, there was a bit of a drop. Immigration, in and of itself, isn’t revolutionary, it only asks concrete questions. Very few immigrants recognize the link between their living conditions and their arrival in France and move forward politically.
Cahiers: One thing we found very interesting in your film is that it avoids two traps, those of miserablism and global discourse.
Sokhona: The problem of misery in the foyers has often been used by humanitarian organizations, who never get beyond pointing it out. They endorse a certain ideology. They don’t think people can organize themselves to make these changes. So, when I show the foyer, I do it with a precise idea in mind. There’s no need to dwell on this. I’ve also tried to avoid giving any grand speeches. We must show more in images, rather than resorting to discourse. And if we do introduce a speech, it has to complement the images, we have to try not to conclude with such a speech. Otherwise, we forget that everything is already concrete in the image and we give another idea, too general, and this is a serious mistake to deliver to those we’re trying to set an example for. For example, right now there are strikes at the Foyers Sonacotra. The workers there have given it an orientation quite different from the strike at rue Riquet. They’re no longer fighting just for another foyer: they talk about racism, about how there are too many cops in the foyers, they’re trying to build solidarity across poorly housed groups in France.
Cahiers: In your film, leftists are seen from a vantage within the situation of immigration itself. There is an engagement with the representation of leftists and French intellectuals.
Sokhona: In the film, I don’t show sympathy or contempt for leftists. I try to show them how I see them. It’s important to understand how leftists may have made certain errors when they arrived at the foyers. For example, at Foyeur Riquet, the strike which was set off was a wildcat strike, with a relatively low degree of politicization. The immigrants weren’t able to correct the mistakes made by the leftists, or even to talk to them, to say: support us with our own words. Because the immigrants didn’t even have political language in which they were confident. They knew that they wanted a new foyer, which would bring about an end to their problems, and they knew this before they were aware that they were participating in a political struggle. Because of this fact, the leftists were able to impose their ideology. “It was cool” that each organization had “its” four or five immigrants.
It wasn’t until the second year of the strike that politicization made progress, to the point where the workers were able to start a dialogue with the leftists, at times telling them “we no longer agree with you on this or that point.” It got to the point that the immigrants themselves decided to distribute a leaflet in the market, as we see in the film. There is another aspect of the problem, which is the “discourse” of the extreme left. Given their theoretical training, leftists think that all immigrants face the same problems. They didn’t think of any division within the foyers, that certain people were exploiting others, etc. This all led to errors. Regarding the representation of leftists in the film, I had to make a choice between placing them in the scene in a realistic manner or doing something else: this is what I tried to do with the image of the guy sitting in the chair. He’s someone whose discourse is very clear, but who’s not putting it into practice at all, he’s entirely cut off from the masses. I wanted to prompt the leftists to criticize not only their way of being with the immigrants, but also with the French workers, to get them to do some reflection.