Here and Elsewhere (Ici et ailleurs)

In 1970 this film was called "Victory".

In 1974 it is called "Here and Elsewhere".

And Elsewhere. And...

In 1970 this film was called "Victory".

In 1974 it is called "Here and Elsewhere".

And Elsewhere. And...

We have chosen a Palestinian revolution to prove to the world,

that this Palestinian earth,

which has been taken away by the Zionist enemy,

we would give it back to its people, to its first origins.

And we won't give it back by peaceful means.

After having lost hope to give it back by peaceful means...

we undertook this task through war...

and with a gun.

And we shall construct peace with the help of this gun.

"The most important result...

of the armed Palestinian Revolution...

is the direct participation...

of the Palestinian woman...

in the revolution...

in order to accomplish her part...

side by side with the Palestinian man."

So it was in the middle or the beginning...

So it was in the beginning or the middle of 1970.

We go to the Middle East. Who is that "we"?

In February, July 1970 there is I...

there is you, there is she, there is he, who goes to the Middle East,

amongst the Palestinians, to make a film,

And we shot things in this order, and we organized it.

She, you, he, I organized the film like that.

First, of course, the people...

the people...

"What Israel says is untrue;

It is not a problem of borders between the Arabs in general,

and Israel in particular."

The people, the people's will.

Then there is the people taking up arms, the armed struggle...

the people's war...

the armed struggle, the people's war...

the armed struggle, the people's war...

Then there was the political work. The political work...

"There is truly a victory of the Palestinian people".

...the political work. The people's education.

Then there was the time that it takes, the popular war extended.

The effort extended the long march.

The popular war extended, commanded by the people's logic.

And all that, until victory.

"Revolution until victory".

"By the people, for the people, revolution until victory".

All that, we had all organized like that.

All the sounds, all the images, in that order.

All the sounds, all the images, in that order...

saying: here is what was beautiful in the Middle East.

Five images, five sounds that hadn't been heard or seen on Arab earth.

The people's will, plus...

plus the armed struggle equal the people's war, plus...

plus the political work equal the people's education, plus...

plus the people's logic equal the popular war extended...

extended...

extended until victory of the Palestinian people...

And this is what one, what he, what I, what she,

what you had shot elsewhere.

Elsewhere, 1970, February-July.

Elsewhere, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria.

Elsewhere, the Fatah's Information Department.

Elsewhere, the 8,000 dollars from the Arabic League.

And then we came back home, I came back, you came back.

From that, anyway, we haven't recovered yet.

She, you, he, I finally came back here, in France.

It didn't go well.

And then days passed, months passed...

THE ME'S AND THE YOU'S

"This one, I say, doesn't want to be a member of the Socialist Party"...

THE YOU'S AND THE ME'S

"This past week, in order to bring the government bankers

to submit on several demands, we saw that the workers' strength..."

It doesn't go well anywhere. Nowhere does it go well.

Here it doesn't go well, I can't do anything.

Back in France, very soon you don't know what to make of the film.

Very soon, as one says, the contradictions explode, including you.

I begin to see it. I begin to see it.

Very soon - as one says the contradictions explode, including you...

...and you too, you too.

Because of this...this...this...

this...became that.

Or because that...that...that...

that...became this:

THINKING OF THAT AGAIN

ALMOST ALL THE ACTORS ARE DEAD

THE ACTORS IN THE FILM WERE FILMED IN DANGER OF DEATH

DEATH IS REPRESENTED IN THIS FILM BY A FLOW OF IMAGES

A FLOW OF IMAGES AND SOUNDS THAT HIDE SILENCE

A SILENCE THAT BECOMES DEADLY

BECAUSE IT IS PREVENTED TO COME OUT ALIVE

MAYBE, IN A THOUSAND AND ONE DAYS,

SHEHERAZADE WILL TELL THIS OTHERWISE.

Through adding hope to dream, figures have probably been mistaken.

Or rather: since we find ourselves near zero, we didn't add but subtract.

Or rather: it's negative that has been added and first:

HERE AND ELSEWHERE

French Revolution and Arab Revolution.

Arab Revolution and French Revolution.

Here and Elsewhere;

Victory and Defeat;

Foreign and National;

Quick and Slowly; Everywhere and Nowhere;

To Be and to Have;

Space and Time; Questions and Answers; In and Out;

Order and Disorder; Interior and Exterior; Black and White;

Yet and Already;

Dream and Reality.

Here or Elsewhere;

Powerful or Miserable; Today or Tomorrow;

Normal or Mad;

Everything or Nothing;

Always or Never;

Man or Woman;

More or Less;

To Live or to Die;

Poor or Rich.

ABOUT WEALTHY AND POOR.

Too simple and too easy to simply divide the world in two.

Too easy or too simple to say simply

that the wealthy are wrong and the poor are right.

Too simple and too easy to simply say

that the poor are right and the wealthy are wrong.

Too easy and...

Too easy and too simple.

Too simple and too easy.

Too easy and too simple to simply divide the world in two.

Here is how the Capital functions; something like that,

perhaps one poor and one zero equal one less poor...

one less poor and another zero equal one even less poor...

one even less poor and one zero equal one richer...

one richer and another zero equal one even richer...

one even richer and another zero equal one much richer.

The Capital functions like that.

At one given moment it adds, and what are added are zeros.

"Yes but zeros that represent tens, hundreds, thousands of you and me,

the capitalist says, thus in fact they are not really zeros".

One must see or learn to see that tens, hundreds, thousands of me and you,

when it's time to pay...

when it's time to sum up defeats and victories...

one gets it up the ass very often, one gets it up the ass because one...

I didn't want to see you either, she either...

and he either didn't want to see that all those dreams are represented.

He didn't want to see that all those dreams

are represented at a given time.

Time given and taken back again by zeros that multiply them.

LEARNING TO SEE, NOT TO READ

But as they are zeros, it multiplies and nullifies at the same time.

And so one hasn't had the time to see that at this moment, in this place,

our hopes have been reduced to zero.

To see for instance that the image of a 17-plus for instance...

...the image of a 36 equal already, here in May, the image of a 68...

...whereas for instance, the image of a 17-plus the image of a 36...

elsewhere in September, still equal the image of a 70.

In the Soviet or American capitalistic system,

it is the system that works, works, works...

It works like that.

And since our dreams are most of the time added as series of zeros...

it has to be said that the images of the sum

will have nothing to do with the sum of images.

Here as elsewhere...

One can be poor, here, at one place, and be a millionaire elsewhere...

a millionaire in images of the place.

This should begin to be crammed into your head.

Poor revolutionary fool.

Poor revolutionary fool.

Millionaire in images of revolution.

Poor revolutionary fool, millionaire in images of revolution.

THINKING OF THAT AGAIN, HERE AND ELSEWHERE

Millionaire in images of revolution.

So, one can finally see that what happened in this film happens

In any American movie, where I added, you added...

Armed struggle.

Political work.

Extended war.

Until victory.

O.K., but here, the images can be seen altogether.

At the movies, this is impossible.

One is obliged to see them separately, one after the other...

which results in:

The people's will.

Armed struggle.

Political work.

Extended war.

Until victory.

But it is seen as such because in fact when one makes a film,

things really happen this way.

Each time, one image ceases to replace the other.

Each time the image after expels the images before and takes its place...

keeping of course, more or less, the memory of it.

This is made possible because the film is moving...

and the images don't come altogether, but separately to inscribe themselves

one after the other, on their support:

Agfa, Kodak, Orvo, Gevaert...

And on the whole, time has replaced space, speaks for it, or rather:

Space - the people's will.

Space has inscribed itself on film in another form...