Partner (1968)

Pierre Clémenti: Giacobbe I and II

Photos 

Quotes 

• Giacobbe I and II : The things are not as we see, neither as we feel them generally. But it is as the theater shows us. The things are receptacles of evil, which is, of irreality. The theater is one of the ways that conduct men to reality. In the beginning, things were real, the world in its childhood was real, there was a ressonance on men. To look to the world at that time was to see the infinite. Now, something is growing inside of me, that doesn't come from me but it comes from the darkness inside of me. And soon there'll be nothing. Except our obscene masks that imitate reality in between the sputum and the manure of the world.

• Giacobbe I and II : Before anything, our theme is life. But if you think there's something missing in life, steal a camera, and try to give a style to life. Film panoramic shots about life, in Technoscope and in colors if you have wide ideas. Film static scenes of death in black and white if you like Godard's beginning or film in double shots. The cinema is part of our spectacle. Our spectacle is part of the cinema. And what it our spectacle? Machine-gun a man or guillotine or cut him into pieces. Soon his body will no longer be visible but the decapitated man will continue to exist, not in just one place but in all places. Here's our spectacle, decapitated, mutilated, cut into pieces not in just one place but in all places. Tomorrow night, 9 PM, the town will lose power. Coffee shops, theaters, squares streets, houses, televisions. Pitch black! Two of you will go to the power station will turn on and off, on and off, many times, 30 times, 40 times. The light will come and go on an obsessive and rhythmic way. Millions of brief flashes on the eyes of millions of individuals. The spectacle begins like this, in family. And now, all you together...

  [adressing to his students to repeat the following words] 

  Giacobbe I and II : It's forbidden to forbide. It's forbidden to seal. Free the passions. Free the expression. The distributors are soulless. Ejaculate their desires. Steal their happiness. Consume more, live less.

• [repeated line] 

  Giacobbe I and II : Let's take out the masks!

• Giacobbe I and II : The only duty of a man of the theater is to make theater. Because the only duty of a man of the theater is to make theater!

• Giacobbe I and II : One day I'll get you out of there and you'll die of fear, because that hole is your view of the world

• Giacobbe I and II : Fireflies? Oh, the worms that glow...