Tag Archives: Maoism

Histoire(s) du cinéma {Chapter 1(b): Une Histoire seule} [1989]

“And Gauguin, he buggered off, man, and went all tropical.”

Sang Nick Cave.

On the brilliant song “There She Goes, My Beautiful World”.

And our world is going to shit.

Fast.

So let’s get some answers, shall we?

Event 201.

10/10/19.

Coronavirus.

Bats.

http://www.centerforhealthsecurity.org/event201/scenario.html

“The pathogen and the disease it causes are modeled largely on SARS, but it is more transmissible in the community setting by people with mild symptoms.”

Sound familiar?

Players.

War gaming.

Avril Haines.

Former Deputy Director of the CIA.

haines.html

Instead of CNN, Event 201 came up with a fake news channel called GNN which supplemented the reality of its war game.

Go to 1’17” in video.

Correlation does not necessarily imply causation, but consider the following:

A.  The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation helps put on the Event 201 coronavirus simulation on October 10, 2019

B.  Bill Gates leaves the boards of directors of Berkshire Hathaway [Warren Buffett] and Microsoft on March 13, 2020

C.  94 of the 154 coronavirus deaths in the U.S. as of March 20, 2020 were in Washington State [specifically in the King County (Seattle) area]:  Bill Gates’ home

Bill Gates’ father was the former head of Planned Parenthood.

The Gates Foundation gave $82 million to Planned Parenthood organizations over the years 2009-2015.

Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation

The Event 201 bat coronavirus simulation in NYC on 10/19/19 was cosponsored by the World Economic Forum.

Among its board members is Al Gore.

https://www.weforum.org/about/leadership-and-governance

Also among its board members is Queen Rania of Jordan.

If you look at the Twitter account of John Podesta (Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign chairman), you will find that the first person he followed on Twitter was Queen Rania.

Why?

Also on the World Economic Forum board is David M. Rubenstein of the Carlyle Group.

The Carlyle Group has a close connection to the Bush family.

On the morning of 9/11/01, the Carlyle Group was meeting in Washington, D.C.

Who was at that meeting?

Dig!

“Event 201 was supported by funding from the Open Philanthropy Project.”

http://www.centerforhealthsecurity.org/event201/about

What is the Open Philanthropy Project?

Who runs it?

One of the founders of Facebook (and his wife).

Dustin Moskovitz (the person in question) donated $20 million to Hillary Clinton’s campaign.  He was the third-largest donor in the 2016 campaigns.

http://www.cnn.com/2016/09/09/politics/facebook-cofounder-gift-democrats

Melinda Gates is on the board of The Washington Post.

melinda-french-gates-elected-director-washington-post-company

Bill Gates has attended the Bilderberg Meetings.

bilderberg-group-conspiracy-theories-secret-societies-new-world-order-alex-jones-a8377171.html

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/is-bilderberg-a-conference-on-world-affairs-or-a-powerful-global-cabal-depends-on-who-you-ask/2012/06/01/gJQA5uqx7U_story.html

Both Bill and Melinda Gates were considered by Hillary Clinton staffers as possible running mates for her 2016 run.

https://time.com/4534899/hillary-clinton-wikileaks-running-mates/

Are you seeing a theme here?

This amazingly prescient Event 201 which had a scenario (see above link) that mirrors the present coronavirus outbreak almost exactly (transmission of a coronavirus from bats to humans…misunderstanding of community spread dynamics owing to mistaken comparison to SARS) was headed and funded almost entirely by left-wing, globalist people who support the Democratic Party in the United States.  The only “foil” might be the Carlyle Group presence on WEF’s board (a connection to the equally-globalist, anti-Trump Bush family).

The Clintons and the Bushes.  Lots of money.  Unequivocally anti-Trump.  And they just happen to run a coronavirus simulation a few months BEFORE the current outbreak even began in China.

Cui bono?

Bill Gates has plenty of money.

He can withstand the shock to his personal bank account.

The Democrats (and Marxist globalists) were unable to impeach Trump.  Before that, they were unable to have Robert Mueller (former FBI Director) bring down Trump for “colluding” with Russia in the 2016 election.

So what did they have left in their effort to unseat the populist Trump?

Were they backed into a corner?

Was their collective corruption about to come to light?

Perhaps they played their last card:  attempt to destroy the U.S. economy with a pandemic PSYOP.

An average of 25,000 American die every year from the flu, but we don’t close the whole country down.

In 2017-2018, the CDC estimates that 61,000 Americans died from the flu.

past-seasons.html

Finally, how did a Johns Hopkins website become the end-all/be-all source for global and American coronavirus statistics?  Why was Johns Hopkins working with the Gates Foundation for the 10/19/19 bat coronavirus simulation Event 201 in NYC?  Has the simulation now become “real”?

Which brings us back to Gauguin…and Godard.

And part two of the greatest film ever made (in my opinion).

Histoire(s) du cinéma.

Godard contends in this 42 minute segment that cinema (the movie industry) is really a part of the cosmetics industry.

Everything is masked (and anonymous).

All is façade.

Godard further excoriates Hollywood by calling it a minor branch of the industry of lies.

Quite a humorous and pithy insult.

And self-deprecating.

It is true that Godard was an avowed Marxist.

A Leninist.

And even a Maoist.

And so it’s no surprise that he references Bertolt Brecht.

But Godard was, at this point in his career, becoming less of a radical (politically) and more of a humanist.

He was mellowing as a political firebrand.

But he was hitting his apex of creative experimentation.

I must admit.

This section is not the strongest of his eight-part masterpiece.

Section one Toutes les histoires is a tour de force.

But section two, Une Histoire seule, is a bit of a sophomore slump.

Or a lull.

A composer cannot maintain a fever-pitch indefinitely.

The great auteur got our attention in the first section.

And then he eases up.

He played the “head” (as in jazz).

And now he is beginning to improvise.

At first, he loosely pounds out the melody à la Thelonious Monk.

It sounds like more of the same.

And it is.

But it’s subtle.

It is a creator pondering his own creation.

“What have I just created?”

He turns it over and surveys it.

He feels its dimensions.

He tosses it and catches it like a baseball.

He estimates its weight.

The greatest movie ever made, Histoire(s) du cinéma, is not a movie in the strictest sense of the word.

It is not a narrative film per se.

There is very little NEW footage within.

Just like James Joyce’s magnum opus Finnegans Wake, it is not a novel.

It is much closer to poetry.

But it is novel (adj.).

This is a film review.

 

-PD

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La Chinoise [1967)

Even geniuses make mistakes.  That’s how I thought I’d begin.  And then…viewing again.  It is like “Heroin” by The Velvet Underground.  Was Lou Reed, the songwriter, promoting the use of this drug in the song of the same name?  Not necessarily.  It boils down (no pun intended) to something I learned in economics:  positive vs. normative.

And so, we have a film by Jean-Luc Godard which is very difficult to sum up.  On the surface it is easy.  The Situationists called Godard a Swiss Maoist (a sort of double insult).  Even in that, they were only part right.  Yes, Godard today lives in Rolle…in the canton of Vaud:  Switzerland.  But he was born in Paris.  He didn’t move to Switzerland until he was four years old.  Of course, he would return to Paris for university (and eventually to make a name for himself as critic and director).  Actually, it was a back and forth:  la France, la Suisse, la France, la Suisse…like a tennis match.

Back to my point:  this film does not necessarily “prove” that Godard was a Maoist.  But was he?  And what would that mean?  Let’s investigate.

First, I should mention that I have read four books about Godard, one more which is a book-length interview, an additional collection of his writings, and finally an actual book by Godard which was published by Gallimard.  Of the first category, two were biographies (by Richard Brody and Colin MacCabe respectively).

In my opinion, a short review of Jean-Pierre Gorin and the Dziga Vertov Group are needed.

First Gorin.  Wikipedia (in English) is typically terse when it comes to Jean-Pierre.  For our purposes, it is enough to say that Gorin is nowhere called a Maoist in this short entry.

Next…Dziga Vertov Group.  Again, no one is called a Maoist in this similarly curt Wiki reflection.  The closest thing is a non-hypertext mention of the film(s) British Sounds/See You at Mao.

This may seem like laziness on my part (and it is), but it is important to note that the “Dziga Vertov” period of Godard’s oeuvre is the most unknown (and, one might say, mysterious).  This would be roughly 1968-1972.

And so we are brought to the man at issue himself:  Mao.

What ideas are pertinent?  Anti-imperialism.  The Long March.  The People’s Republic of China.  The Great Leap Forward.  45 million dead?  The Cultural Revolution.

One must wonder whether it is a coincidence that the Dziga Vertov Group disbanded the same year Nixon visited China:  1972.  Was this seen as weakness by Maoists?

Let’s recalculate:  40 million dead?  70 million?

Just as in the Holocaust, how much about China’s “dark side” was known outside of the country during Mao’s tenure?  For young idealists, the concept of radical revolution might have an appealing luster, but when deaths are counted in millions and tens-of-millions the appeal should (must!) become appalling.

What were the nature of these deaths?  Mao bragged about burying alive 46,000 scholars.  One thing is certain:  there is a persisting battle between those who seek to rehabilitate the tarnished image of Mao and those who perhaps feel that the extent of atrocities for which he was responsible has not yet fully been made evident to the world at large.

Mao is a strange figure…to whom just about every superlative and, equally, insult has been applied. Just as in a criminal investigation, we must scrutinize the sources and their authors with cui bono:  what do they stand to gain by promulgating such theories?

Were 3 million tortured to death during the Great Leap Forward (1958-1962)?  If even one was tortured to death, isn’t that too many?

Yes.  We do not hold torturers and terrorists to be our heroes.  They forfeit our respect at that point…no matter how great their theories are.  It is solemnly inexcusable.

No, rather we uphold the nonviolent masters:  Gandhi and King.  Obama is no King (nor king).  The end does not justify the means.  We who torture lose our humanity.  We are only torturing ourselves.

And so even Nixon himself was a Maoist in a cynical, Machiavellian way.  Anything to counter what Reagan would later normatively call “the evil empire.”  Yes Mao, it is still the imperialists who are the true axis of evil in this young century.  But China is learning how to project its influence.  It would be wrong to call the China of today anti-imperialist.

Enough about Mao.  That is the freedom we have…at this late moment…to still express such a thought.

Godard’s dalliance with Maoism didn’t last long (in terms of his career as a whole).

Perhaps it was Dostoyevsky.  No doubt Paul Nizan.  Most importantly it was the ravishing Anne Wiazemsky.  Godard was doubtless smitten…you can tell by the camera’s loving gaze.  He would have gone to the end of the earth for her.  A revolutionary goddess!

Veronique Verkhovensky.  Her eyes are wild in their tranquility.  She is no paper tiger.  Juliet Berto is the brunette…Wiazemsky the redhead.  Such a beautiful revolutionary group!

Henri Shatov.  He endures the brunt of human stupidity here.  No, he cannot entice Juliet to abandon the radical cell as they dive headlong into terrorism.

Kirilov adds a dash of Peter Max color before his inevitable demise.

Will the Maoists in power continue to struggle on two fronts (ISIS and Ukraine) while fronting like sucker MCs?  Yeah, oops:  Nemtsov and Nisman worked for you…32 was 23 (if 6 was 9).

Francis Verkhovensky.  Like Jimmy Stewart in Rope.  Should we contact Arthur Lee or Althusser in regards to all those little red books of Aden Arabie?  I’m inclined to believe that Love is all you need.

-PD

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