Novembre 1963 (1983/2008)
C-print on Kodak Endura. Diasec mounted 171,5 x 200 x 2,5 cm
Courtesy: Fonds national d’art contemporain
November 1963 by Ange Leccia is based on fusing and contrasting two series of images of different nature and origin. One sequence of images is taken from the famous home movie shot by zapruder, an ordinary citizen who filmed the assassination of President Kennedy; the other consists of stills from Godard’s Contempt, at the moment when Camille (played by Brigitte Bardot) leaves her husband in the company of an American film producer in the latter’s sports car, a journey with fatal consequences. The similarities and differences between the two sets of images build a play of visual and emotional transfers affecting questions including the image and the sense of the tragic: the coincidence of the year of creation of both films; the documentary and amateur nature of one confronted with the fictional character of the other; the contrast between two situations at the end of the relationship of a couple, Kennedy’s by his death, Camille’s by her leaving her husband; and, naturally, two tragic moments ending in death.
And in both sequences, the automobile is a common element, the site where the end of the drama is played out. The car makes an appearance and plays its role as an instrument in an unmistakably contemporary epic, a key character at the very centre of the drama, closely related to the protagonists of the story.
