An Interview with Barbet Schroeder



For this week's blog, I have found "An Interview with Barbet Schroeder" from 1966; originally published in The Tulane Drama Review.

We spoke about Schroeder in class this week as he was a producer on Rouch's Cocorico Monsieur Poulet and was also a documentary filmmaker himself; we watched excerpts from his documentary, General Idi Amin Dada, in class as well.

I find this interview interesting because of the context in which it is conducted, in the year 1966, and because of Schroeder's multiple references to Godard and the New Wave cinema, which we have also studied in class.

Schroeder says of the relationship between the New Wave and documentary: "The New Wave people want to get back to the beginning. Godard looks to Chaplin, he is not opposed to the classics. We want to get back to the original purity of the movies, and documentaries are the essence of purity. We move from documentaries to realism to un- conventional things in realism…"

Schroeder reveres Godard and views his work as akin to that of documentary: "Take Godard. Each scene of his is real. He sets the situation beforehand and then lets his performers do what they wish. He doesn't know exactly what's going to happen. He is there simply to film it, not shape it."

I enjoy Schroeder's definition of documentary filmmaking: "We make movies without stories. The viewer senses the presence of a movie-maker with the camera in his hand, and the movie-maker is free to show exactly what he feels. When something moves him he gives it right away, without disguising it or getting it in a structure. The technique is very close to that of the modern painter. And the film is never finished, never "polished"; it's a kind of essay, a draft…"


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