Jean-Louis Comolli's 'Corps et cadre' Challenges Visual Overload

Jean-Louis Comolli's collection of essays, 'Corps et cadre. Cinéma, éthique, politique', published by Verdier, argues that cinema is a matter of desire for the invisible and shadows, opposing a contemporary blinding light of overexposure. Written between 2004 and 2010, the book presents a political thought on cinema, calling for the freedom of the off-screen space. Comolli militates against the enslavement by information and spectacle, which he calls the 'ideology of the Visible', and against the transparency caused by proliferating screens. He asserts that cinema's artifice of framing prevents the illusion of continuity between lived experience and viewed images. The author emphasizes that we live only by nuances between forms, and that cinema's critical power is needed against the naturalistic uniformity of images and reality. He links lack of discernment to an excess of audiovisual archives repressed into a 'non-look' and 'non-listening', and to an anxious patrimonialization that fabricates the past. For Comolli, cinema is not servile recording but an alteration of the world through the fusion of a desiring gaze and a machine. The book examines documentary work by Raymond Depardon, Frederick Wiseman, Wang Bing, and Pedro Costa, reflecting a society rich and sick with images. The preface is by Dominique Païni.