Robert and Frances Flaherty Prize Yamagata IDFF 2009
L'encerclement
(The Incirlement)
Canada 2008 160'
Director: Richard Brouillette
Camera: Michel Lamothe
Sound: Simon Goulet, Alexandre Gravel, Eric Tessier
Editing: Richard Brouillette
Music: Eric Morin
Production: Les films du passeur
Internet:
Website L'ENCERCLEMENT
Dossier de presse français (PDF)
Presskit english (PDF)
Katalogtext Forum Berlinale deutsch/englisch (PDF)
Website Noam Chomsky
Website Ignacio Ramonet
Blog Normand Baillargeon
Website Susan George
Website Omar Aktouf
Blog Oncle Bernard
La mondialisation
François Denord
Blog François Brune
Le Québécois libre: Martin Masse
Le Québécois: Jean-Luc Migué
Website Filip Palda
George Mason University: Donald J. Boudreaux
Le Courrier: L'ENCERCLEMENT néolibéral décortiqué à la Berlinale
Le Courrier: La pensée encerclée
ISAN: 0000-0004-FA5A-0000-D-0000-0000-Z




L'encerclement (DVD)
There are texts that with time become indispensable. One such is “La pensée unique”, published by Ignacio Ramonet in “Le Monde diplomatique” in January 1995. It is the basic inspiration behind Richard Brouillette’s film. The title of this film-saga, which is expressionist in its musical punctuation and at the same time Calvinist and anti-spectacular in black and white, is programmatic: L'ENCERCLEMENT - LA DEMOCRATIE DANS LES RETS DU NEOLIBERALISME. The filmmaker, who spent twelve years making the film, and who is also its producer, script writer, montage specialist and translator, has put together a fresco of thirteen specialists from areas relating to capitalist and neo-liberal phenomena and their avatars. It is an erudite performance of articulacy and active intelligence.
Richard Brouillette’s commitment is to make this learning accessible. The narrative is organised into two parts and ten chapters; the texts, which lead to particular transitions, and Eric Morin’s powerful music punctuate the unfolding of the montage, which has been put together like tiles. Each intervention comments upon and critiques the previous one and develops what has already been set out in terms of concepts and reflections.The filmmaker assembles thought and fragments of knowledge, piece by piece. Archives are integrated at certain moments, anchoring clarified phenomena in layers of time. These phenomena cannot be reduced to the current world crisis, which Richard Brouillette could not have anticipated and which, in a magnificent gift from reality to the film, corroborates the validity of his approach. Rather than allowing ENCERLEMENT to become partisan, he intelligently leaves it to brilliant defenders and opponents of the neo-liberal system of values to speak, carrying spectators along with them on an inspiring journey: that giving oneself the means to understand traces the possibly revolutionary path of one’s emancipation.
Jean Perret, Visions du Réel Nyon 2009
With: Normand Baillargeon, Susan George, Omar Aktouf, Oncle Bernard (Bernard Maris), Michel Chossudovsky, François Denord, François Brune, Martin Masse, Jean-Luc Migué, Filip Palda, Donald J. Boudreaux