Destroy Yourselves

This 1968 feature was one of the first Zanzibar films, a group of low-budget experimental works made in France during the late 1960s. By turns fascinating and frustrating, it mixes playful nihilism with political exhortation. At one point an abstraction of a flashing ambulance light leads to a flicker sequence of black and white frames, and later a dialogue plays out in voice-over against a black screen. Though the film has minimal dialogue, a number of monologues shot in long takes seem crucial: in one sequence, filmed at the University of Nanterre only a month before the revolutionary action of May 1968, art critic Alain Jouffroy lectures on the need for revolution to a large hall with only four people in it. Director Serge Bard made this first film at age 21 and directed two more before converting to Islam and renouncing cinema in 1969. 75 min. (FC)

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