Search The Archive
Poto and Cabengo are the names two identical twin sisters have given each other as part of a complex private language they have invented, and this film by Jean-Pierre Gorin documents the phenomenon.
"What makes the film so strange and beautiful - a beauty which comes from the beauty of the little girls, these birds of language - derives from the fact that their language is one with their bodies; the sounds sent out by one are immediately picked up by the other, who sends it back as an echo, ultra rapid exchange, which gives the sense of a balletic dialogue between beings of the third kind; the two sisters, Poto and Cabengo, keep moving, keep running from one place to another, keep leaving the frame, and the shots try - most of the time in vain - to frame them. They are not afraid at all of the shooting process: they play with-it, they disrupt its ritual. There is no need anymore for a reverse shot. Gori has been smart enough not to conceive his film as a means to unveil the mystery of this happy stutter. He does not occupy the position of an expert, pondering over the case. His problem is first and foremost a cinematic problem - how not to trap the two little girls in the rigid frame of classical, linear shooting, in a technique which would not have any doubts about itself..." (Cahiers du Cinema)
Jean-Pierre Gorin Born 1943.
Co-directed (with Jean-Luc Godard) "Wind From the East" (1969); "Struggle in Italy" (1970), "Vladimir and Rosa" (1972); "Tout Va Bien" (1972), "Letter to Jane (1972). Directed — "L'Ailleurs Immediat" (1973-4).