Relations with Film Professionals - Text 4
This new form of communication between professionals and a company made possible the emergence of a true community which could quickly promote the Cantar without going through the industry’s usual channels. This particular case demonstrates Jean-Pierre Beauviala’s attention to the specificities of the digital resources of the Internet, which made direct communication with professionals possible. In this way, the Cantar contributed to the formation of a network of users capable of influencing the manufacturer’s decisions.
A Film Director behind a New Machine: The Case of the 8-35
The collaboration between Jean-Pierre Beauviala and Jean-Luc Godard is an example of the singular relations between this engineer and the world of film creation. Godard contacted Beauviala in 1976 in order to develop a 35 mm camera which could be carried “in the glove compartment of an automobile.”[1] Godard, who has always had an interest in cinema technology, settled for a time in Grenoble, not far from the Aaton premises, no doubt with an ideal in mind of entering into a new kind of relationship between someone who makes films and someone who makes cameras. Several prototypes of the 8-35 saw the light of day, and very occasionally Godard used one of them, in particular at the beginning of Passion (1982). But the imperatives of the entrepreneur Beauviala were hard to reconcile with Godard’s intentions, whose ambition was to use technology to acquire true autonomy, like that of a painter. Gradually, relations between the two men deteriorated, weakening the project: the 8-35 would thus remain at the prototype stage. In the long interviews they granted to Cahiers du cinéma between June and August 1983, Beauviala and Godard spoke frankly about the profound reasons for their disagreement, even as both regretted the failure of this joint endeavour. Beauviala did not fail to make use of this collaboration, to the point of making it a symbol of the company’s history. The experience undoubtedly illustrates a true fascination for cinematic creation which went well beyond the invention of machines.