Acéphale

Director: Patrick Deval. The film belongs to the (nowadays) so-called Zanzibar group, a group of young leftist intellectuals and, as stated in the subheading of one of the current books about this group of "dandies," who, influenced by the intellectual climate in Paris at the end of the 1960s and May 1968, created radical films both in terms of content and form. Headless is precisely such a product on the edge of film experimentation and a political-worldview essay. Formally, it relies on a contrasting black and white camera and long static shots, deliberately disrupted and "liberated" by rare and beautiful camera movements. In terms of content, it is an uncompromising hymn to the radical rejection of contemporary society and a call for a new beginning. Thoughts are expressed in the form of long declamations on the edge of a political manifesto and poetry... poetry: the thoughts surprisingly resemble those of F. Nietzsche. Did the main character perhaps represent a new Zarathustra? The film emanates, especially due to the involvement of members of the Zanzibar group, the semi-improvised, unofficial, youthful spirit of filmmakers, for whom the film was both entertainment and a personal, artistic, and political mission. /// Interview with the author: http://sensesofcinema.com/2008/before-the-revolution/patrick-deval/ (07.02.2016)