The film director and theorist Jean Epstein is known for his poetic feature films such as COEUR FIDÈLE (1923) and THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER (1928). But he also shot a series of no less impressive documentary films. His documentary on the eruption of the Etna volcano in Sicily in 1923 was considered lost until a print in the rare 28mm home cinema format was discovered in Spain. Epstein’s characteristic atmospheric images are enhanced by the splendid colours of the Filmoteca de Catalunya’s restored version.

The shift towards an animist approach to filmmaking appeared early on in Epstein’s work. Yet, it was after World War II and his decades-long engagement with natural settings and phenomena such as storms, seas, wind, and clouds that human figures were markedly de-centered. He seized on opportunities to multiply perspectives in natural settings as he had previously done in LE PAS DE LA MULE (1930) or his film about the eruption of Mount Etna, LA MONTAGNE INFIDÈLE (THE UN-FAITHFUL MOUNTAIN, 1923). The title of the corresponding text, “Le Cinématographe vu del’Etna” (The Cinema Seen from Etna, 1926) underscores the relocation of subjectivity from the camera to the mountain, or the non-human subject. Other unrealized films promised greater use of the non-human, such as “Au Péril de la mer”, for which Epstein argues to potential producers that not only the ambiance but its budget will profit from an abundance of exterior, characterless “ad hoc” shots. Epstein suggests a pantheist-perspectivist cinema could develop alongside the emerging science of quantum physics: “An animism is being reborn. We know now that we are surrounded by inhuman existences.” The cinematograph, as a vehicle for appropriating perspectives, is ideally placed to interrogate man’s place in the terrestrial narrative, just as Galileo’s lens once did.

James Schneider, in: Jean Epstein, Amsterdam 2012

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