A Conversation with Jackie Raynal at Light Industry on November 13
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Jackie Raynal in a scene from her film DEUX FOIS (1969)
Jackie Raynal is perhaps best known as the former programmer of two of New York’s premiere art cinemas – the Carnegie Hall and the Bleecker Street – who began her career in the 1960s as the film editor for New Wave directors such as Eric Rohmer, Jean-Daniel Pollet and Jean Eustache. Challenged by Zanzibar patroness Sylvina Boissonnas to stop editing other people’s films and make her own, Raynal traveled to Barcelona, where she completed DEUX FOIS (1969) in a single week. One of the most enigmatic of the Zanzibar films, it is composed of a series of unconnected episodes, some repeated twice. The fairy-tale phrase “once upon a time” is turned on its head, as is the logic of classical film construction. With herself as the film’s “star”, Raynal announces each of the film’s sequences and proclaims, theatrically and ironically, “tonight will be the end of meaning.”
