“Counter-image of pain”

the cinema to elaborate mourning in C’est loin Bagdad [fotogramas] by Leila Danziger

Abstract

This article proposes an analysis of the book C’est loin Bagdad [fotogramas] (2018), by Leila Danziger, based on its intersections with cinema. The book, which contains only one poem divided into nine parts, already in its title refers to the short film of the same name, from 1985, directed by French filmmaker Valérie Brégaint. Throughout the poem, Danziger will elaborate on the grief and loss of Brégaint, who was her friend. Thus, the plot of the film C’est loin Bagdad is mixed with biographical aspects of both the poet’s and the filmmaker’s life. The purpose of this article is to show how Danziger’s lyrical text dialogues with cinematographic language, as well as to debate the possible use of the image for the elaboration of mourning, based mainly on the reflections proposed by Roland Barthes (2018), Susan Sontag (2003, 2004), Audrey Linkman (2011) and Didi-Huberman (1998). Through the analysis, it was understood that, in the poem, the images – material and imagined – weave the plot that intertwines life and death, fiction and reality. As key pieces in dealing with the death of a loved one, they fill the present as constant reminders of an imprecise and distant past. The images do not act as evidence or proof of something that has happened, as effective memories of remote times, on the contrary, they are blurred vestiges of the past that only acquire meaning when poetically organized, when elaborated and repositioned in the lyrical text.