A young Bernard Blouseau (foreground)
with the original CineOla mobile
recording facility on the set of 'Aujourdhui' (1963)
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By Heather Bell
Lazarus is proud to announce it's tie-up with
the French soundtrack company CineOla. For students
of obscure film music the history
of this tiny but venerable company is as convoluted
as it is captivating. Founded in 1937 by Henri
Blouseau, CineOla began life
specialising in soundtracks for the new 'talkies'
and as a supplier of 78rpm 10" discs of music
and sound effects to the film trade
and cinemas. Many of it's early music recordings
were actually French translations of American
standards.
During WW2 Blouseau was approached to create
the soundtracks for two Maquis films shooting
in Marseilles. It's here that we see the
first stirrings of the CineOla company's unorthodox
recording practices, and where it initiated its
use of the mobile studio. This
resulted in both music and sound effects being
created on location simultaneously to filming.
Shortly after this Blouseau took his
mobile studio and began working in Algeria as
a result of the conflict and his connections with
the resistance movement.
In the 1950's several live recordings were made
by the company using American jazz artists who
were resident in Paris while avoiding
the draft in the US. Some major American musicians
are thought to have appeared on these recordings
incognito, for pin money.
Lazarus are in the process of employing the skills
of Patrick Cassavetti to clearly identify some
of these musicians, although the
rights to these discs are still somewhat cloudy.
By 1961 Henri's son Bernard had inherited the
company. The following year he broke new ground
by masterminding the recording of the
innovative 'Interpretations' series of soundtrack
LP's. These unusual recordings featured an assortment
of luminaries from the avant
garde scenes of Europe and America performing
'cover versions' of each other's music and words,
live on set, alongside the actual
shooting of the films.
Notable releases during this 10 year series include
'Word Paintings' by the San Francisco poet cooperative
The Dead Beats, and
featuring Herman Myla's opus "L'Ile Noire".
Also the trilogy by Jarzi of Sara Castafiore's
"Moulinsart" and André Whitworth's
musique concrete versions of the late Pepe Taylor's
poems. Recordings by Dieter Roth, both solo and
with the Berliner Music Workshop
were another highlight. Dieter's records were
later issued on Editions Hansjorg Meyer, and are
in fact the only CineOla releases
still commercially available.
CineOla continued issuing recordings from this
series until the early 1970's, when lack of interest
and dwindling sales forced them
to shut down the entire label permanently and
concentrate their resources on the technical side
of the industry. Although not before
Blouseau had launched, albeit briefly and unsuccessfully,
the small spoken word imprint Audio Verite, through
which he released
several albums of political commentary, interviews
and poetry readings.
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From the early 1970's until the early 1990's
the company owned modest studios in Paris and
Marseilles and a small mobile facility
based in Dakar, Senegal. During this time CineOla
continued creating music and sound effects for
the film industry, including
several soundtracks for Bleu, the French glamour
cine company, and Scandinavia's Colour Climax.
Although these soundtracks were
never issued to the public, several samples from
this period did almost find their way onto commercial
releases, such as the debut
EP of French pop group AIR, who had to remove
the unauthorised sample, and Danish electronic
duo BlakWolf, who suffered similar
legal problems on their second album.
Sadly, due to the sweeping technical and economic
changes the film and music industries have undergone
these past 20 years, the
company has seen its operations savagely whittled
down to the brink of extinction. In the summer
of 2001 Blouseau agreed to sell
part of the company, including a share in it's
catalogue of rare recordings, to Lazarus.
Matt Johnson has long been an admirer of the
early output of Blouseau's company and in fact
CineOla's 'Interpretations' LP's served
as the inspiration for TheThe's current series
of 'Interpretations' EP's, which have so far featured
Foetus, DAAU and John Parish
as The oTHErs. More TheThe 'Interpretations' are
under construction at this moment and due for
release throughout 2002.
Lazarus aim to relaunch the CineOla label in
some shape or form, although primarily for instrumental
works by TheThe and The oTHErs
for the film industry. The two companies also
intend to share their studio facilities, with
Lazarus obtaining use of CineOla's film
and audio mobile facilities while CineOla gain
equal access to The War Room and Miloco, the Lazarus
studios situated in London.
Over the past few months Matt has spent time
working on CineOla's mobile film and audio studios,
editing tape and chopping celluloid
for TheThe's forthcoming CD and DVD collections
- '45rpm' and '35mm' - earmarked for release by
the Sony Corporation in the spring
of 2002.
It's sincerely hoped that Bernard Blouseau will
agree to continue his involvement either as figurehead
of a relaunched CineOla label
or perhaps in a more active day to day role at
Lazarus. We'll be featuring interviews with both
Matt and Bernard about this exciting
tie up in the coming weeks on This is TheThe Day.
Watch this space.
©2001 Lazarus Limited. All rights reserved.
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This site contains many of John Pilger's published articles
in the New Statesman and The Guardian since 1998, as well
as an excerpt
from his book, Hidden Agendas, and his chapter from the
recently published Iraq: Under Siege.
John Pilger was born and educated in Sydney. he has been
a war correspondent, film-maker and playwright. Based
in London, he has
written from many countries and has twice won British
journalism's highest award, that of 'Journalist of the
Year', for his work in
Vietnam and Cambodia. Among a number of other awards he
has been 'International Reporter of the Year' and winner
of the 'United
Nations Association Media Prize'. For his broadcasting,
he has won an 'American Television Academy Award', an
'Emmy' and the
'Richard Dimbleby Award', given by the British Academy
of Film and Television Arts. His latest TV documentary,
his 50th, Apartheid
Did Not Die! - will be shown in Australia by the ABC in
June.
'Pilger's strength is his gift for finding the image,
the instant that reveals all: he is a photographer using
words instead of a
camera' ... Salman Rushdie
'John Pilger is fearless. He unearths, with steely attention
to facts, the filthy truth, and tells it as it is ...
I salute him.'
... Harold Pinter
Excerpts from his latest book, Hidden Agendas -
There is something in journalism called a slow news day.
This usually falls on a Sunday or during the holiday period
when the
authorised sources of information are at rest. Nothing
happens then, apart from acts of God and disorder in far-away
places. It is
generally agreed that the media show cannot go on while
the cast is away.
This book is devoted to slow news. In each chapter, the
setting changes, from Iraq to the East End of London,
from Burma to the
docks of Liverpool and the West of Ireland, from Vietnam
to Australia and the 'new' South Africa. In all these
places, events have
occurred that qualify as slow news. Some have been reported,
even glimpsed on the evening news, where they are unremembered
as part
of a moving belt of images 'shot and edited to the rhythms
of a Coca-Cola advertisement', wrote one media onlooker,
pointing out
that the average length of the TV news 'soundbite' in
the United States had gone from 42.3 seconds in 1968 to
9.9 seconds.*
That is the trend. In American television, a one percentage
point fall in the ratings can represent a loss of $100
million a year in
advertising. The result is not just 'infotainment', but
'infoadvertising': programmes that 'flow seamlessly into
commercials'.**
This is how commercial television works in Australia,
Japan, Italy and many other countries. Britain is not
far behind ...
* Kiko Adatta, Picture Perfect, cited by Sharon Beder
in Global Spin: The Corporate Assult on Environmentalism,
Green Books, UK,
1997, p. 208
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