De grands événements et des gens ordinaires (1979) AKA Of Great Events and Ordinary People

In 1978, Ruiz was commissioned to make a television documentary about the French elections from the viewpoint of a Chilean exile in the 11th arrondissement. But, contrary to the producers’ expectation, the Left lost. Ruiz seized on this anti-climax to make a documentary about nothing except itself – a film whose central subject is forever lost in digression and ‘dispersal’, harking back to his Chilean experiments of the ’60s. It is the best, and certainly the funniest, of self-reflexive deconstructions of the documentary form. Ruiz drolly exaggerates every hare-brained convention of TV reportage, from shot/reverse shot ‘suture’ and talking-head experts to establishing shots and vox pops (narrator’s note to himself: “Include street interviews ad absurdum”.) 

Director: Raoul Ruiz. AKA Of Great Events and Ordinary People
Writers: François Ede, Raoul Ruiz.
Stars: Jean Baudrillard (narrator) (uncredited), Pascal Bonitzer (uncredited), Waldo Rojas (uncredited), Michael Rubbo (uncredited).
Cinematographers: Jacques Bouquin, Dominique Forgue, Alain Salomon.

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