The famous tetralogy directed by Lana and Lilly Wachowski has become a veritable pop-culture artifact, marking entire generations. The documentary The Matrix: Generation looks back at this phenomenon and explores themes that have not yet been dealt with in previous projects based on the films. Benjamin Clavel, the documentary's director, came to present the program at the Unifrance Rendez-Vous in Biarritz. He tells us about the particular angle he chose to tackle his subject. Estelle De Araujo, Co-head of Sales at The Party Film Sales, also shares international buyer's initial reactions to the program.
Unifrance: How did you come up with the idea for this film, and with the treatment of the subject matter?
Benjamin Clavel: The idea came not from me, but from Julien Abadie and Jérôme Dittmar, the two co-writers I worked with. Julien is an author based in Montreal now, who had written a book on Speed Racer, one of the Wachowskis' films. He and his editor, Jérôme Dittmar, had a project to talk about Matrix more widely and in a more accessible way than in a niche book, with the dream, or at least the strong desire, of making a documentary out of it. If you're going to talk about cinema, you might as well do so with moving images.
Jérôme knew the producer, Dominique Barneaud (Bellota Films), from a previous project. It was Dominique who came to talk to me about the project. Obviously, I was immediately interested. The subject wasn't quite what it is today. It was a big job to pick out the themes that seemed relevant for an audiovisual medium, and for this ARTE slot, since this channel was targeted from the outset. But it was fascinating, a real painstaking task to prune the subject matter and get to the heart and soul of what the Wachowskis wanted to say. In the making of the film, in the writing of the voice, and in the whole formalization of the project, I brought out the issues that had spoken to me at the time and that I felt were the strongest.
I'd already made some cinema documentaries, so I obviously had in the back of my mind the idea of one day making a documentary about the Wachowskis or Matrix, but I'd never got the ball rolling. When you're a director or a writer, you always have ten or fifteen projects on the go, waiting for an opportunity. Matrix wasn't a project I'd written out completely, but it was one I had in mind. It was a real pleasure to be able to get down to work on it, especially with a point of view as relevant as that of the two co-authors.
How would you describe the documentary in a few lines? How does it differ from other projects based on the cult saga?
Benjamin Clavel: It's a really enjoyable film to watch, and includes all the great landmarks and moments of the films. There's a popcorn aspect to it that's really enjoyable, and at the same time, it delves into subjects that hadn't been explored before. The film is quite singular, going in a different direction from the analyses that have been made of Matrix. Matrix is seen as a piece of pop culture, one in which reality has caught up with fiction. The documentary is dense, but I think it explores things that few people have thought about, notably the link with psychedelia, with the 1960s and 1970s, a link that has been little dealt with, at least in documentaries.
I'd also like to highlight the incredible work of Sébastien Iglesias, who created the illustrations that punctuate the narrative, and give a shout out to Baptiste and Pierre Colleu for creating the original music.
The political and avant-garde dimension of Matrix is obvious. How did you manage to make this subject your own?
Benjamin Clavel: I really discovered Matrix on the big screen when I was 17. At 17 you're very optimistic, you dream, you want a lot of things, and I was quite politically active. As I say at the start of the film, I initially took Matrix for a blockbuster that wasn't necessarily going to open up any philosophical or thought-provoking avenues for me. That's why I wanted to tackle the political question, which is present in all the Wachowskis' films. Because at the time, I saw it as a contradiction. A big-budget American film from Warner Bros. with a huge marketing campaign couldn't be a film with the political connotations or ideals I had. In fact, it's really a film of its time, coming out at the beginning of alter-globalization. There was something happening at that time with regard to a capitalism that would be overwhelming.
The political question is addressed in the background, stemming from aesthetic and philosophical issues. The Wachowskis are not filmmakers who make overtly political films, but entertainment and science fiction. The political dimension derives from the philosophical scope of their work.
There's another nuance to be added. Like all great works that become classics, they are reinterpreted to suit the times. And we see this to a large extent in the documentary.
Your documentary ends with the questions "What is real and what is not?" and "Is it important to distinguish between the two?". What do you think as a documentary filmmaker?
Benjamin Clavel: The image is always real. In fact, even when we talk about the virtual, we're talking about something real. The question is not so much to distinguish the real from the virtual, but to know where we want to be, in which reality. There are parallel realities, as we see in the film with the psychedelia.
It's true that the anecdote Keanu Reeves tells at the end of the film, about a little girl who doesn't care to distinguish between what's real and what's not, raises questions. I'm using it to make a point. I don't know the age of this girl; I think he says she's 13 or 14. But as we can see today, there's a desire to escape into alternative worlds, be they virtual or otherwise, a bit like being under the effect of a drug, with all the pleasure that can bring, but also all the danger. We talk about video game addiction, and that's certainly a good term, because you end up getting used to it and losing your footing.
I'm still convinced, and this is what I wanted to say at the end of the documentary, that it's important to distinguish virtual reality from physical reality. That's not to say that we shouldn't delve into virtual reality, but that we should go into it with an awareness of it.
The documentary conveys universal values such as love and freedom. Did you have an international audience in mind when you wrote the film?
Benjamin Clavel: Yes, the international aspect was considered from the outset, firstly because our subject is North American, and therefore necessarily with a foot in the USA, in Hollywood. The Matrix films were shot in Australia and the film had a genuine worldwide impact, not just in France, but throughout Europe and the rest of the world. When you try to build a discourse around Matrix, you try to address everyone, no matter the language barrier. It was also interesting to see the reactions of potential future buyers in Biarritz, to see that the pleasure seems to be shared!
There are things we all agree on pretty quickly, whether for better or for worse, such as big-city downtown spaces, which all look absolutely the same these days, or collective imaginaries like that of Matrix.
I made a documentary on Neill Blomkamp, who directed District 9, Elysium, and Chappie, and has just released a new film. He's someone who's pretty much of my generation, who was also very affected by Matrix, and he's Canadian-South African. It's great to be able to share on this scale.
2023 is the Year of the Documentary. Is there a documentary you've particularly enjoyed that you'd like to share?
Benjamin Clavel: There's a documentary that I really liked, which I rewatched when making my documentary, even if it seems a bit far away, called Cobain: Montage of Heck, a documentary about Kurt Cobain directed by Brett Morgen, a close family friend, who is also an incredible director. I think this documentary perfectly combines beautifully painted and animated biographical parts, musical setting, and archival footage. For me, it's an example of documentary "writing." I'm also very fond of Agnès Varda, Gianfranco Rosi, and José Luis Guerín, the Spanish documentary filmmaker who made the film Work in Progress, which I saw on ARTE when I was younger. It had such an impact on me that I think it contributed to my desire to make documentaries. It's kind of my bedtime documentary. It's gorgeous in the way it approaches people. It's not particularly concerned with framing, nor is it a very composed documentary, but it gets right up close to people. It observes a construction site in Barcelona, in the city, buildings have already been razed and something else is being built. It's all about the local residents, who are seeing their neighborhood change.
Do you already have any initial leads for international sales of your documentary?
Estelle De Araujo : We've already received offers and are negotiating. It's a project we started working with very early on, having pitched it at Sunny Side. We'd already worked with Bellota Films on other films, in other genres. We'd heard about the project for a while and it corresponded to what we wanted to develop at The Party Film Sales in terms of audiovisual documentaries, documentaries on very pop-culture, very cinema subjects. A desire linked to personal desires, but also to the things we've put in place in terms of international sales strategy.
We came on board quite early, having accompanied the film from Sunny Side, which was a good time to start talking about it. We were there right from the writing stage, which was very intense, with a lot of back and forth. It was great to follow the work as an exporter, to be able to start talking about it well in advance. In fact, that's what we're trying to do more and more, to generate interest and potential pre-sales
We started showing the film, and it was finished just before Biarritz, so the timing was very tight, but we upheld the deadline. Initial feedback from Europe, Australia, New Zealand, and the English-speaking world has been very good and encouraging, with promises of offers on the way.
It's also great to have been able to take advantage of Biarritz's video platform, at least for this film - it was viewed many times. These fruitful Rendez-Vous herald a great adventure for documentary abroad
The Anglo-Saxon world is showing great interest, but what about the United States?
Estelle De Araujo: It's going to be a challenge, because it's not a territory where there's a lot of space. But there's a cinema/society angle that's very well handled in the film, with a very good balance. It's going to take a little more time in the United States, but we're keeping a close eye on it.
Was the Unifrance Rendez-Vous in Biarritz useful?
Estelle De Araujo: It's a fairly strategic time of year, just after the start of the school year. As a vendor, our years tend to follow this pattern, from September to June. It's rather ideal to be able to launch the documentary during the Rendez-Vous, with a real spotlight on the film on the closing night. The Rendez-Vous offer great opportunities to meet our buyers; we were able to send them the film beforehand, which was effective, and the feedback is more direct. The timing for the film was ideal, and that's what we were targeting in our launch plan.
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