The Makes (2009)

In 1967, following the success of BLOW UP, Michelangelo Antonioni planned to make a film in Japan. The project was cancelled, and Antonioni opted for the United States instead, where he shot ZABRISKIE POINT. In 1983, Antonioni published "That Bowling Alley on the Tiber," a compilation of notes and intentions for films that were never made, "narrative nuclei" that point towards a cinema that remains invisible after Antonioni's death in 2007. In the spirit of the Zen riddle about the sound of one hand clapping, artist and filmmaker Eric Baudelaire invents the notion of the "make" as a remake of a film that was never made, the ghost of a movie lurking behind a document attesting to its possibility. Adopting the format of a DVD bonus track, Baudelaire's 26 minute experimental film THE MAKES unfolds as a staged interview with Philippe Azoury, a well-known film critic for the French newspaper Liberation. In the course of this film, Antonioni's unrealized cinema finds a form through an assemblage of various materials that end up giving meaning to each other: story ideas from Antonioni's "That Bowling Alley on the Tiber," found film stills from various unrelated Japanese productions, a precise and surprisingly convincing critical discourse by Azoury, real life anecdotes and an ominous correspondence between Barthes and Antonioni. Exploring the notion of invisible cinema, this montage of unrelated material from the past creates a strangely concrete cinematic experience in the present.