There are books that describe the sometimes noisy diversity of an author’s life. The one just published by Ghislaine Gutierrez Villetard, Nicole Brenez and René Viénet belongs to this category: With my cock and my knife – René Viénet filmmaker (published on June 11 by Marest Éditeur). The title cheerfully contributes to giving a cheeky appearance to this work dotted with abundantly illustrated memories. René Viénet is a figure who, since the end of the 1960s, has worked to counter the conformism he encountered. And he did so in the many areas to which he devoted his energy.
Initially, René Viénet was the son of a dockworker from Le Havre (Seine-Maritime). He describes himself as curious about everything and turbulent to the point of being expelled from his college twice. He then left for Paris, where he decided to learn Chinese at Langues O’, the current National Institute of Oriental Languages and Civilizations (Inalco), while joining the Situationist International. A movement created in 1957 which dissolved itself in 1972 and which René Viénet had left a year earlier.
Professor in Nanking, then critic of the Chinese regime
This Situationist International, related to the ultra-left and which was a continuation of the anarchist and libertarian theses of the early 20th centurye century, probably left traces in the different aspects of René Viénet’s life. In 1965, after finishing Langues O’, he left for China where he became a French teacher in Nanking, the former imperial capital located in the east of the country. Faced with absurd directives requiring students to only work on works by Chinese President Mao Zedong (1893-1976) translated into French, René Viénet preferred to return to Paris. He was then 21 years old.
“One thing is certain: without him, I probably would not have published anything.”
He approaches the world of publishing as a translator of Chinese books. At the same time, frequent trips to Hong Kong led him to become friends with Pierre Ryckmans (1935-2014), who, at the Belgian consulate, accumulated information on the bloody repressions which then accompanied the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976). In 1971, encouraged by René Viénet, Pierre Ryckmans wrote – under the name of Simon Leys – the book Chairman Mao’s New Clothesthe first denunciation in the West of the Maoist regime.
In the numerous documents inserted in the second part ofWith my cock and my knifea letter from Simon Leys dated 2003 expresses his gratitude to René Viénet. The Belgian author writes there in particular: “One thing is certain: without him, I probably would not have published anything.” But, in 1971, many intellectuals who displayed their admiration for Maoist theories strongly criticized Chairman Mao’s New Clothes. And, in 1976, in a television program which took place the day after the death of the Grand Helmsman, René Viénet was vigorously attacked by members of this Maoist intelligentsia. They asserted in particular that there were no repression camps in China because, when they went there, they did not see any…
“This impertinence is very useful”
In previous years, René Viénet had often stayed in Hong Kong and made many friends in the very active Chinese cinema circles of the British colony. Then he had the idea of attacking Maoist China by placing fanciful but politically targeted subtitles or dubbing under the images of Hong Kong action films. He says: “I was not rich, I even had very little money: (…) so I found how to make a film without having to mobilize technical means which remained out of reach, those of filming.” He had, he explains, learned in a Parisian post-production studio to meticulously make subtitles.
Therefore, these films with diverted subtitles and dubbing, such as Can dialectics break bricks? in 1973 or The Daughters of Kamaré in 1974 will be noticed. And in 1977, based on images taken from the propaganda department of the Chinese Communist Party, René Viénet edited Chinese, another effort to be revolutionary!. When the film was shown in two Parisian cinemas, Maoist militants threw ink bottles which shattered on the screen.
However, this film will be the subject of a debate, on France Inter, in the program “Le Masque et la Plume”, the text of which is published in the documents of the book. Among the film critics of the time, the journalist Georges Charensol proclaimed: “This is an extraordinary film, we have never seen such authentic material.” While the writer Jean de Baroncelli believes “that the tone of the film is really very funny and this impertinence is very useful”. Shortly after, in May 1977, the film was selected for the Filmmakers’ Fortnight (then Directors’ Fortnight) at the Cannes Film Festival, while Mao by himselfanother film edited by René Viénet and released that year, represents France in the short film category.
With Chinese, another effort to be revolutionary!René Viénet says he accomplished “a work that breaks with the complacent laziness of French documentary cinema”.
Other adventures arose around Chinese, another effort to be revolutionary!. The storyline featured three friends who had been in prison in Guangzhou since 1975 and who shared the pseudonym Li Yizhe. They were guilty of putting up a wall poster of several pages – a dazibao – demanding democracy. In 1979, Xi Zhongxun, who had just been appointed governor of Canton province, released them. Xi Zhongxun (1913-2002) had been vice-premier before being the victim of a Maoist purge and sentenced to sixteen years in prison in 1962. He was the father of Xi Jinping, the current leader of China.
René Viénet says that to achieve Chinese, another effort to be revolutionary!it took him almost two years. With two friends, including Francis Deron – who would later be correspondent in Beijing for Agence France-Presse (AFP) then for Le Monde –, he accomplished “a work of documentation, organization of archives, methodological imagination, a break with the complacent laziness of French documentary cinema, a harsh but understandable shortcut on a major subject whose past was poorly known, the present frightening and the future uncertain”.
From the docks of Le Havre to the vineyards of Cahors via Taiwan
Virulent enmities have accumulated against René Viénet in the world of sinology. They are cited at various points in this very detailed book. But, over the years, René Viénet has taken care of many other areas. The book indicates that he was a dockworker at the port of Le Havre when he was a teenager, before becoming an apprentice butcher. In the 1970s, he happened to enter the CNRS, but was excluded twice because of the films he was making. Furthermore, he taught Chinese at the École Polytechnique from 1974 to 1978.
“The details of my banking and industrial adventures would require another book as thick as it is documented, at least as detailed and very cruel on a few assholes that I faced then, but not always defeated.”
Then, within the publisher Champ libre, René Viénet directed the “Asian Library”, before founding his own publishing house, which bears his name and which notably published Marie-Olympe de Gouges, a humanist at the end of the 18th centurye century(written by Olivier Blanc, 2003), biography of this feminist playwright who published a Declaration of the Rights of Women and Citizens in 1791, before being guillotined in 1793. In a completely different domain, René Viénet owns, in the region of Cahors (Lot), a vineyard – the Château de Parnac –, which is used in the making of a settled red wine, the Malbec du Quercy vintage.
René Viénet also lived for nearly twenty-five years in Taiwan, where he notably represented the Paribas bank and the French nuclear industry. He worked, with the General Nuclear Materials Company (Cogéma) and Framatome (Franco-American Atomic Constructions), to supply enriched uranium to the island’s six nuclear reactors. At the end of the book With my cock and my knifea text signed by him indicates: “The details of my banking and industrial adventures would require another book as thick as it is documented, at least as detailed and very cruel on a few assholes that I faced then, but not always defeated.” René Viénet’s offensive combativeness is as strong as it is constant in all the areas in which he has marked his passage.
