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Fr
L’Avocat de la terreur (Terror’s Advocate)
directed by Barbet Schroeder, cinematography by Caroline Champetier, AFC
With the ongoing investigation, informations would keep coming in, which made for incredibly suspenseful meetings and constantly provoked new encounters.
Two lengthy interviews were conducted with Jacques Vergès at a few months interval, but the high point of the shooting was the trip to Algiers.
It quickly became clear that everything started with the Algerian War, with the first FLN bombings in response to OAS actions, with the Algerian death convicts, with the lawyer collective set up by Jacques Vergès and other French and Algerian lawyers, with Vergès’ conceptualisation of a “breaking defense”.
We therefore met, both in Algiers and elsewhere, people who were, at the time and later, involved in terrorist actions. This is also what the film is about – it is a history of terrorism, from the Algerian War to the years preceding 9/11.
It took Barbet Schroeder amazing skills to assemble the testimonies of people who literally were on deadly bad terms with each other, of officials and political personalities from various countries. Eugénie Grandval assisted him in this slalom where a cleared up path was much needed.
The interviews had to be shot digitally. Since we would have to go back to film in the final stage, principals were shot with two Varicam Panasonics from TSF Caméra, with sometimes a HDX 400 in replacement of one of the Varicams (we never managed to even them completely). In investigative interviews, Eugénie Grandval would try and go down the invisibility route with a small Sony HDV A1. The film also contains a lot of archive footage as well as some impressive document material.
We arrived to conformation, then 2K calibration, with disparate material to which Nelly Quétier had to give visual coherence through her brilliant editing. Here I must thank the admirable tenacity of my friends (as I believe I may call them) at Mikros Image and Arane-Gulliver, Gilles Gaillard and Mathieu Leclerc, Alexandra Pocquet, Sophie Denize, Sophie Lustière, Luc Pourrinet.
From the first back-to-film tests, calibrating on the Lustre, cleaning of the archive footage, to short strip tests per roll and finally the Cannes copies, we, an army of obsessionnal Penelopes, wove and unwove our work under the control of Christina Crassaris (postproduction director) and of course Barbet Schroeder who never showed up late...
As I was unavalaible for a few shooting days, I shared my photographing task with a talented new cameraman by the name of Jean-Luc Perréart, while Léo Histin and André Chemetov were my reliable assistants.
We are all grateful to Barbet Schroeder for allowing us to live, day by day, such a cinematographic adventure.
(Translated from French by Mathilde Bouhon)
