La Parole perdue (1969) Marc Scialom

Fleeting images of real crowds – military and civilian – alternate with surrealist drawings. La Parole perdue was made in memory of colonial wars and especially after the shock of the Battle of Bizerte (July 1961). The soundtrack brings together two voices, one male, one female. The woman seems to encourage the man to say something close to his heart but man seems aphasic, it will first only inarticulate sounds and sighs, then he manages to articulate words which all mean the rejection of war and its horrors. Band image has presented some drawings being traced (we guess, behind the translucent sheet of paper on which they appear, the shadow of the painter who traces, Mélik Ouzani): these drawings expressionist style evoke the sinister military glory, the massacres which are the reverse of the glory.