FJ Ossang, poet and filmmaker of offbeat darkness

Meet at the Chantefable bistro in Paris (20^e arrondissement), where poets once gathered at late hours to sing. Text and music, punk and industrial, this is precisely the fuel of the cinema of FJ Ossang, 66, shaved temples and crew cut hair. A native of Cantal, the young man branched off to Toulouse where he created the review Cee as well as the Cééditions, which published texts by the “Beat” poets, William Burroughs and Claude Pélieu, by the surrealist Stanislas Rodanski… “This time needs neither poets nor warriors, but warrior poets! », writes Ossang in Void Generation, published in 1993 by Warvillers and Via Valeriano, and reissued in June by Presses du réel (432 pages, 23 euros), while the restored version of his first three feature films – The Case of the Morituri Divisions (1985), The Treasure of the Chiennes Islands (1990) and Doctor Luck (1997), the only color film of all his work.

For Ossang, cinema is “a terrible ordeal, each time it’s a little terror on Earth”

This cult, insurrectional trilogy, revisiting thrillers and anticipation, is also haunted by the masterpieces of German and Russian cinema of the 1930s (Friedrich W. Murnau, Fritz Lang, Serge Einsenstein, etc.), which Ossang discovered at the Toulouse Cinematheque. Will be added much later two “long” hypnotics, Dharma Guns (2010) and 9 fingers (2017), which earned the filmmaker the Leopard for Best Director at the Locarno Film Festival in Switzerland. Ossang also won the Jean Vigo prize in 2007 with the short film Silence, condensed with sublime greys. In total, a dozen films, whose production stories are in themselves dented adventure novels. The cinema is “a terrible ordeal, each time, it’s a little terror on Earth”, summarizes the interested party, between Doctor Chance and Mister Bad Luck.

Read also: Article reserved for our subscribers “The Case of the Morituri Divisions”, “The Treasure of the Dogs Islands” and “Doctor Chance”: splendor of the silent and punk energy

Writer, poet – his first collection written at the age of 17 is entitled Bloodbark –Ossang was also a singer and pillar of punk groups. “The first was called Of sheer destruction (PDD). Then was born Messageros Killers Boys (MKB) Provisional faction. Everything is temporary, I already felt it at the time! Mays punk was a great adventure that transcended all classes”explains the director who joined the Institute for Advanced Film Studies (Idhec) in Paris in 1982, the former name of La Fémis.

Noise cinema

Say “Ossang” and a circle of moviegoers have eyes that shine, so much the memory of his labyrinthine films imprints the retina, with their messages invading the screen, as if taken out of the “boxes” of the dumb. Her work is constantly enlightened by critics (Nicole Brenez, Gabriella Trujillo…), as well as by the essayist and director Michèle Collery, author of FJ Ossang. Literally filmmaker (Rouge Profond, 2021) – who wrote an article in August in the online magazine TK-21.

You have 33.73% of this article left to read. The following is for subscribers only.