Jean-Paul Fargier "L'Entretien"

‘At the invitation of the French magazine Art Press Jean-Paul Fargier made a special video production around a conversation between Jean-Luc Godard and Philippe Sollers about the virgin Mary. But the conversation referred also more generally to heart and soul, Freud and Bonnard (!). In Hail Mary, Godard transposed the Virgin's story to the present day and thus transformed one of the most loaded figures in film and, at the same time, rediscovered the possibilities of film as a medium. In this film, Godard achieved the sacred via the profane and he suggested the Immaculate Conception by means of a naked woman. At the time shocking, Godard's filming of the Incarnation however touches the film's secret (and impossible) object: the (re)creation. Philippe Sollers has made The Virgin's Hole, a video-film which Godard admits influenced his Virgin film. De Appel asked Jean-Paul Fargier to show and illustrate his videotape which, through a refined editing constantly frames the conversation. Through an afternoon of 'profanities', De Appel wishes to offer a different interpretation of the desire for belief, ethics and spirituality than is at present provided.’ (‘An afternoon of profanities’, Newsletter De Appel, 2 (1987) 1.)