?
Of Great Events and Ordinary People (1980)
In 1978, Ruiz was commissioned to make a television documentary about the French elections from the viewpoint of a Chilean exile in Paris’ eleventh arrondissement. But, contrary to the producers’ expectation, the Left lost. Ruiz seized on this anti-climax to make a documentary about nothing except itself – a film whose central subject is forever lost in digression and ‘dispersal’, harking back to his Chilean experiments of the ‘60s. Its political content is deliberately left negligible: it’s hard to tell at the end who did actually win the election, let alone why.
Genres:
Documentary
Keywords: imdb.paris-france,
imdb.cinema-verite,
imdb.essay-film,
imdb.reference-to-john-grierson,
imdb.new-guinea,
imdb.chilean-immigrant,
imdb.ritual + 4 more,
imdb.repetition,
imdb.street-interview,
imdb.cult-director,
imdb.election
Production companies: Ina,
Institut National de l'Audiovisuel (INA)
Runtime: 65 min.
Released: Feb. 24, 1980
Status: Released
Certification: NR
