Alain Bergala, commissaire de l'exposition
After working with Le Monde diplomatique from 1974 to 1977, Alain Bergala (born in 1943) then wrote for Cahiers du cinéma from 1977 to 1988, becoming deputy chief editor and then director of the collection Éditions de l'Étoile/Cahiers du cinéma. He has written numerous articles and books on Rossellini, Godard, Kiarostami, Bergman, Mizoguchi and Hitchcock (1) whom he regards as "hair directors".
A film director himself, he has directed several feature films for the cinema and television, written with the scriptwriter Philippe Arnaud: Faux fuyants (1982, co-directed by Jean-Pierre Limosin), Où que tu sois (1986), Pense à moi (1989) and Incognito (1989). Alain Bergala has also directed documentaries on the films of Pasolini (1997), Pagnol (1998), Chaplin (2002), Kiarostami (2003) and Erice (2010), and educational films such as Le cinéma, une histoire de plans (1996) and Le point de vue (2007). He has also investigated the cinematographic aspects of painting (Fernand Léger in 1997) and poetry (Cesare Pavese in 1995). He directed the documentary Brunettes and Blondes (2010) for this Arts and Cinema exhibition at the Cinémathèque.
He teaches film, notably at Université Paris III and the Fémis institute, and directs "L'Eden Cinéma", an educational DVD collection (2). In 2000 he was commissioned to develop a film project for the Ministry of Education and wrote L'hypothèse cinéma (2002). He also curated the exhibition Víctor Erice/Abbas Kiarostami: correspondences (3).
In this filmed interview, Alain Bergala talks of the challenge of the depiction of hair in the history of art and the decisive role of cinema in imposing the blonde in the West. After the legend embodied by the great stars, he examines a more unexpected aspect of the exhibition: how this theme emerges throughout the history of the 20th century.
Original interview between Alain Bergala, exhibition manager, and Serge Toubiana, director of the Cinémathèque française, on 12 October 2010.
(1) He is notably the author of "Alfred, Adam and Eve", published in the catalogue of the exhibition Hitchcock and Art: fatal coincidences (Milan, 2000).
(2) Publisher: éditions Scérén-CNDP.
(3) Exhibition presented at the Contemporary Culture Centre of Barcelona and the Casa Encendida in Madrid in 2006, then in Paris at the Centre Pompidou in 2007 and at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image in Melbourne in 2008.
