Bergala, Alain

Revistes Catalanes amb Accés Obert

Sharing the Gestures of the Creative Process
Alain Bergala
Statements compiled by Núria Aidelman
ABSTRACT
The article considers key issues in order to develop an analysis of creation in different formative fields. It bases the approach 
on empathy with the creative process of the filmmaker, the comparative viewing of excerpts, and rejection of the scholarly and 
academic deconstruction of films for analysis. Based on experience, the author presents some of the methodologies that he 
has developed for the training of teachers and as professor at La Fémis. For those teachers to transmit cinema from the heart 
of the cinematographic creative process, he considers it fundamental that they experience practice. In the case of the cinema 
school and its students, it is essential that they are able to consider cinematographic issues through the comparative viewing of 
a range of films, the first-hand and in-depth accounts of filmmakers and the analysis of their own practices. The author ends 
by outlining the risks posed by academicism in cinema schools as opposed to the experience of artistic creation.
KEYWORDS
Pedagogy, transmission, creative process, film excerpts, cinema school, comparative method, cinematographic analysis, teacher 
training.
INTERVIEWS · Cinema Comparat/ive Cinema · Vol. II · No. 5. · 2014 · 12-17
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Transmitting the Creative Process 
If we are to transmit cinematographic issues 
to students then we must get to the heart of 
those issues. If we do not formulate our questions 
from the point of view of the creative work, then 
we perform a task that is formal, partial and 
insignificant. To speak of how the  shot scales are 
used is not worthwhile or at all useful, even if it 
is comforting. On the other hand, to approach 
cinema by positioning oneself at the heart of the 
cinematic process requires bold teachers who are 
disposed to do this and who are not afraid. We 
must encourage them and enable them to reach an 
understanding of certain issues through their own 
experience. That may sound obvious, but in fact 
there are few examples of the transmission of the 
creative process, even in the Fine Arts. 
When I gave training sessions for teachers, 
during the ministry of Jack Lang,1 I would give 
them a camera on the first day and one rule for 
the game. They were completely lost. I suggested 
an exercise that involved shooting and editing 
in-camera in two hours, for example. Then we 
watched Mekas and other films shot in that way. 
It came as a real shock. It didn’t help at all if I 
explained the pedagogical theory, but on the other 
hand, carrying out a practical experience, however 
small, changed everything. If I instructed them 
to go out one afternoon and record three shots, 
then they would learn a thousand things about 
the cinema. That is where we must always begin in 
education: by proposing to teachers that they begin 
with creative experience.
Sharing the Gestures of the Creative Process
A film is not pure enunciation. The 
relationship between the filmmaker and his 
characters is fundamental. To demonstrate this, it is 
enough to choose some good examples. If we take 
Summer with Monika, for example (Sommaren med 
Monika, Ingmar Bergman, 1953) it is not difficult 
to see that there are scenes in which what is at play 
is not the relationship between the characters, but 
the way Bergman relates to his characters. The 
choice of excerpts is crucial.
But for the most part, nobody makes this clear 
either to the teachers or the students. Especially 
in France, due to our tradition, films are studied 
as closed objects. We tell ourselves that we are 
performing objective analyses. Many people get 
uncomfortable when I tell them that it is possible to 
perform an analysis of the creative process. I always 
cite that great Renoir quotation, which says that to 
love cinema you have to make it, even if it means 
doing it in your head, imagining the film2. Then 
there is Nabokov, when he tells his students that he 
has not spent a year teaching them literature so that 
they can talk about or identify with the characters; 
he has taught them literature so that they can share 
in the emotion of the author who wrote the book3.
ALAIN BERGALA
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1. Between 2000 and 2003 Alain Bergala was cinema 
adviser for the ‘Five Year Plan for the Development of 
Art and Culture in Schools’ overseen by Jack Lang, then 
Minister for Culture, together with Catherine Tasca, 
then Minister for Education.
2. ‘Pour aimer un tableau, il faut être un peintre en 
puissance, sinon on ne peut pas l’aimer; et en réalité, 
pour aimer un film, il faut être un cinéaste en puissance; 
il faut se dire: mais moi, j’aurais fait comme ci, j’aurais 
fait comme ça; il faut soi-même faire des films, peut-être 
seulement dans son imagination, mais il faut les faire, 
sinon, on n’est pas digne d’aller au cinéma’ (RENOIR, 
1979: 27).
3. ‘I have tried to make of you good readers who read 
books not for the infantile purpose of identifying oneself 
with the characters, and not for the adolescent purpose 
of learning to live, and not for the academic purpose of 
indulging in generalizations. I have tried to teach you 
to read books for the sake of their form, their visions, 
their art. I have tried to teach you to feel a shiver of 
artistic satisfaction, to share not the emotions of the 
people in the book but the emotions of its author –
the joys and difficulties of creation. We did not talk 
around books, about books; we went to the center of 
this or that masterpiece, to the live heart of the matter’ 
(NABOKOV, 1997: 542). 
Cinema Comparat/ive Cinema · Vol. II · No. 5 · Winter 2014
As far as this approach goes, I do not 
have many followers. It irritates the academics 
because it casts doubt on all their certitudes, the 
certitudes of academic knowledge. But other 
types of knowledge exist, and these are accessed 
in other ways. There are many objective elements 
in a filmmaker’s thinking and creative stance: in 
certain shots and sequences we may analyse the 
choices and decisions that testify to the process, 
to how they have come to be filmed or edited in 
that way. With the sequence of the paintings in 
Passion (Passion, 1982) for example, that I often 
invoke, this is exactly what Godard does: he starts 
with the paintings and shows how he works with 
them, one after the other. In the film we have the 
marks of Godard’s process. We see it.
The best way to approach the cinematic work 
is through very good and well chosen excerpts. To 
linger over them, over the details and to compare 
them. But the academy recoils in horror from this 
type of contemplation, which, seen properly, is 
really a test of intelligence and empathy.
Instead of saying, ‘this is the sequence, 
and we are going to reveal the structure’, we 
can try to comprehend how this sequence was 
reached. It is a fascinating process, a constructive 
experience and at the same time, a source of 
pleasure. The deliberation, based on the analysis 
of the elements of the sequence, brings one’s 
relationship with the film to life. The viewer or 
analyst’s pleasure consists not only in taking on 
board the film, but also in empathising with the 
processes and choices by which the film we are 
watching has come into being, in perceiving the 
emotions of the filmmaker. Certain films that 
are very well made and that I can appreciate as 
wonderfully filmed, leave no room and instil no 
empathy for the process that has made them. For 
me, a very important part of the viewer’s pleasure 
derives from the potential to empathise with the 
filmmaker, with their doubts, fears and working 
process. This approach multiplies. And it has 
nothing to do with the delirium of interpretation, 
but rather involves taking as a starting point the 
film just as it is.
One way of performing this type of analysis 
consists in comparing excerpts from films in 
which a similar situation is presented, and 
noticing that the creative processes and choices 
are not the same. For example, if we take the 
pool scene in Three Times (Hou Hsiao-hsien, 
2005) and the corresponding table tennis scene 
in Match Point (Woody Allen, 2005) we see that 
the creative gesture is different and there is a 
different way of thinking about the cinema. We 
learn through making this comparison. If we see 
only one approach, then it seems to us that this 
is the only way it can be done, and this makes it 
difficult to put ourselves in the position of the 
filmmaker who has travelled along a certain path 
to reach that point and make the film the way it 
is. If we compare, we see how each filmmaker has 
found their way of filming.
We can make comparisons between scenes 
that serve an equivalent function in different 
films by different filmmakers, or compare scenes 
by the same filmmaker. In the second case, we 
may sometimes find that there is an impulse that 
drives this filmmaker that is independent of the 
motifs and themes that he films. For example, in 
his first films, Hou Hsiao-Hsien is always distant, 
out of place or in the wrong place, with a strange 
point of view. After he explained to Olivier 
Assayas that at a young age he would look at the 
world from up a tree, that he was far removed, 
then we understood it, we grasp why he makes 
films in this way4. One statement allows us to 
discover the origins and determine which roots of 
creativity are developed over the course of various 
films.
Sense and the Sensible [le sens et le sensible]
I do not believe it is necessary to separate 
the meaning of a film from how it appears to 
the senses. To do so would involve betraying 
and distorting the film, reducing it. To speak of 
the sense of a film, we must always begin with 
that which is sensible, what we see and hear. If 
we set up dichotomies, we kill the object. It is 
about being able to describe something that 
SHARING THE GESTURES OF THE CREATIVE PROCESS
14 Cinema Comparat/ive Cinema · Vol. II · No. 5 · Winter 2014
ALAIN BERGALA
belongs simultaneously to the realms of sense 
and sensibility. We should never depart from the 
meaning, but nor should we establish separate 
categories. The greater the degree to which all 
categories are mixed, the richer the analysis: the 
meaning, the sensible and the creative gesture. It 
is not easy and teachers are afraid that they are 
not able to do it.
You Cannot Encounter Art by Breaking it Down
The only way of getting close to art is to 
take an artistic work or an excerpt that contains 
everything, with all the contradictions. I continue 
to believe that approaching art ought to be an 
encounter. And you cannot encounter art by 
breaking it down. That would be like visiting the 
Louvre and saying: today we will see only blue, or 
only the picture frames. We are before a painting 
with all that entails for the viewer and stirs within 
them. We should leave the speeches for later.
I have never believed, nor will I ever believe, 
in analytically breaking things down for the 
sake of learning. It is all very generalised. The 
lecturer arrives and says, ‘I’m going to explain 
the scale of shots’. But the scale of shots is not a 
thinking-through of the shot; it is the opposite of 
a thinking-through of the shot.
The idea that the cinema can be broken 
down is false. It is a product of fear. It has been 
imposed because it reassures everyone, including 
the institutions. To break something down in 
order to understand it sounds reasonable and it is 
comforting. But it is simply false. We do not learn 
anything in life this way. We learn of everything 
mixed together, confused and in a block. It is 
much more complicated but also fascinating.
Watching Cinema in a Cinema School
There exists the lazy and out-moded belief 
that in a cinema school ‘doing’ is sufficient. And a 
fundamental problem in all the schools is precisely 
that: that too often, the students take into account 
only their own ideas, their own genius, and they 
feel that they are sufficient in and of themselves 
without the need to watch films. This is my battle 
at La Fémis, to tell them that if they count only on 
their own ideas and on what they already know, 
they suffocate themselves and their films will be 
minor in status. If they count only on their own 
energies, they will not make good filmmakers. 
Little by little, this idea –I would almost say, this 
battle– ends up taking root, and they end up 
discovering that the cinema of yesterday and the 
different cinema of today can help them to think 
through their cinema.
The programme at La Fémis is so tight, the 
training so intense, that they have no time: they go 
to cinemas less than the ‘normal’ students. Because 
of this, we have to bring the cinema to the school. 
In addition to the excerpts and films convened by 
the filmmakers-teachers, the viewing develops by 
other means. 
In the first place, inviting filmmakers. 
Recently the Dardenne brothers came and in 
their reflections they revealed themselves as the 
great filmmakers that they are. Over two days we 
watched excerpts from their films, we talked about 
how they work, so the students understand. Direct 
contact with a filmmaker who honestly explains 
his work is something precious. We try to organise 
two-day seminars or, when that is not possible due 
to the schedules of the filmmakers, short meetings 
of two or three hours, and it is always revealing.
I also give a course to the first and second year 
students. I select a theme and taking it as a starting 
point I work with many excerpts and a number of 
films in their entirety. The analyses focus on the 
relationships between excerpts. The comparative 
method remains the best way to think, to give 
them ideas and motivation.
This year we are working on ‘the shot’. 
Everyone will shoot, but it is necessary to watch 
films in order to arrive at a concept of the shot. I 
started with something very simple. I took episode 
4A of Histoire(s)du cinéma (Jean-Luc Godard, 
1998) about which I have a theory: in the first ten 
15Cinema Comparat/ive Cinema · Vol. II · No. 5 · Winter 2014
minutes there is a typology of all the shots possible. 
It permits the students to see and think.
We also watched either the whole of the first 
part of Three Times or Miss Oyu (Oyû-sama, Kenji 
Mizoguchi, 1951), also in its entirety. After viewing 
the film I carry out an in-depth study of specific 
excerpts and shots. This year I have discovered 
something that works and that I ought to have 
discovered a long time ago. Once the viewing is 
over, I leave fifteen minutes so that each person can 
think. After that, they have things to say. 
Finally, each month we invite a filmmaker 
to choose a film from a list that I propose to the 
students; they come to present and discuss the film.
Accompanying the Creative Process
In La Fémis, we undertake comparative 
analysis alongside the students’ exercises. I highlight 
the key issues for a filmmaker, the genuine problems 
of the cinema, and we see how they have resolved 
them. It is a means of indirectly analysing films. 
The last session considered how to film a body 
getting up to dance or getting undressed. It was an 
exercise in mise-en-scène whose starting point was 
the script for a scene from Blow-Up (Michelangelo 
Antonioni, 1966). Taking the problems of cinema, 
we applied the comparative method. It works 
because they see who is thinking about the cinema 
and thinking cinematically.
In their own creative processes, the students 
at La Fémis are closely accompanied by the diverse 
range of film professionals. These teachers are 
always present at shootings in the first and second 
years. There is a double team, that of the students 
and that of the teaching film professionals. The 
teachers being there does not necessarily mean 
that they will intervene, but the students have 
the option of making recourse to them, with 
all the dangers that this brings. A professional 
screenwriter may run the risk of introducing 
conformity, or causing them to submit to the 
norms of script-writing, and the same occurs in all 
areas. In a cinema school, the ‘rules’ and what is 
‘professional’ are threats. I often ask my students 
why their film is so flat, or why the sound is mixed 
is a certain way, and they respond, ‘because we 
want to do it right.’ There is the danger: everyone 
wants to ‘do it right,’ everyone wants to ‘be good’. 
The filmmaker may ask for an unattractive image, 
but the director of photography resists it. The 
permanent danger is academicism. Creativity is 
an entirely different thing. •
Translated from the Spanish by Alasdair Gillon
16
SHARING THE GESTURES OF THE CREATIVE PROCESS
RENOIR, Jean (1979). Jean Renoir. Entretiens et propos. 
NARBONI, Jean (ed.). Paris. Cahiers du Cinéma.
NABOKOV, Vladimir (1997). Curso de literatura europea. 
Barcelona. Ediciones B.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
BERGALA, Alain (ed.) (1985a). Jean-Luc Godard par 
Jean-Luc Godard (Tome 1). Paris. Cahiers du cinéma.
BERGALA, Alain (1985b). Roberto Rossellini. Le cinéma 
révélé. Paris. Cahiers du cinéma.
BERGALA, Alain (1990). Voyage en Italie de Roberto 
Rossellini. Crisnée. Yellow Now.
BERGALA, Alain (1992). Le cinéma en jeu. Aix-en-
Provence. Institut de l’Image. 
BERGALA, Alain (ed.) (1998). Jean-Luc Godard par Jean-
Luc Godard (Tome 2).Paris. Cahiers du cinéma.
ALAIN BERGALA SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
Cinema Comparat/ive Cinema · Vol. II · No. 5 · Winter 2014
17
ALAIN BERGALA
BERGALA, Alain (1999). Nul mieux que Godard. Paris. 
Cahiers du cinéma. 
BERGALA, Alain (2002). L’hypothèse cinéma (Petit traité 
de transmission du cinéma à l’école et ailleurs). Paris. 
Cahiers du cinéma. 
BERGALA, Alain (2004). Abbas Kiarostami. Paris. Cahiers 
du cinéma.
BERGALA, Alain (2005). Monika de Ingmar Bergman (du 
rapport créateur créature au cinéma). Crisnée. Yellow 
Now.
BERGALA, Alain (2006). Godard au travail, les années 
1960. Paris. Cahiers du cinéma.
Director of the Department of Film Studies at La 
Fémis and Emeritus Professor at Paris III. He was editor-
in-chief of Cahiers du Cinéma and he has directed films for 
both cinema and television. He is the author of numerous 
books and articles, including Roberto Rossellini: Le cinéma 
révéle (1984), Voyage en Italie (1990), L’hypothèse cinéma 
(2002) and the following books on Jean-Luc Godard: 
Godard par Godard (1985-1988), Nul mieux que Godard 
(1999) and Godard au travail (2006). Between 2000 
and 2003 he was the cinema adviser for the ‘Plan for the 
Development of Art and Culture in Schools’ run by the 
Ministries of Education and Culture. He has also curated 
numerous exhibitions, including ‘Erice/Kiarostami 
Correspondances’ and ‘Pasolini Roma’.
ALAIN BERGALA
Cinema Comparat/ive Cinema · Vol. II · No. 5 · Winter 2014


Sharing the Gestures of the Creative Process

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Revistes Catalanes amb Accés Obert