Tribute Emile de Antonio

In the Year of the Pig

Emile De Antonio
USA 1968
101 min
V'03

I dont believe that any filmmaker is objective. I think that objectivity is impossible unless you do abstract work. If you deal with the human image in your work, you cannot be objective. Whenever you point a camera, you make a statement. Whenever you cut a piece of film, you make a statement. Im not interested in objectivity, I am a man who believes. Im a man of political belief. I was absolutely convinced before I made the film that the U.S. were wrong. (Emile de Antonio)

Impassioned political militancy sometimes succeeds in producing good leaflets, but rarely good films. In the Year of the Pig is one of the great exceptions. The film is a compilation film tracing the historical origins of the War in Vietnam, with the clear purpose of demonstrating the immorality of the American position. De Antonio is an outraged, furious, partial, and impassioned director. Even so, viewers do not feel intellectually offended by the film. He respects their intelligence. De Antonio possesses an extraordinary sense of history, and what he offers us are incontestable arguments of the moral tragedy in which the Americans (and before them the French) involved themselves. The film proceeds like a theorem. Argument adds to argument, in a rigorous reasoning that leads to one single, irrefutable conclusion: The war cannot be won. Work on In the Year of the Pig began in 1967: When a major portion of the American media and public opinion still believed that the war in Vietnam could be won, Emile de Antonio was the first to say that it had already been lost. (João Moreira Salles)

Credits
  • Harry S. Ashmore
  • Daniel Berrigan
  • Joseph Buttinger
  • Jeffrey Weinstock
  • Helen Levitt
  • Hannah Moreinis
  • Steve Addiss
Monday Film Production, Turin Film Productions

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Nancy de Antoni
35 mm
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