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that's right on the border between being a wave, a perfectly innocent good-bye, and a somewhat hostile shooing me away. This man is very depressed, and a lot of the reason he's depressed is because he's oppressed. For whatever reason (I don't know the specifics of his history), his alcoholism, growing up black in the South, never having had anything of material value, starving himselfthat's what Lucille said; he's suffering from malnutritionthat gesture is very important: it's emblematic of an anger that blacks in the South want to express, but can't really because of the mutual interdependency between blacks and whites, and because of an odd sense of family. And I don't mean "family" in a sentimental way: it's not a good situation. Lucille's brother won't get angry and say, "Get the hell out of here," but at the same time he's not going to smile at me. There are plenty of angry blacks in the South now, but you still find his kind of acquiescence, and it makes me feel terrible. Certainly there's the implication in that scene of the cameraman as one more white exploiter of the black class. I am victimizing the helpless, using them as fodder for my film. If I'd cut the shot before the gesture, I would have cleaned the scene up as far as implicating myself in this idea of white domination of blacks. But then it would have been dishonest. Godard's comment about every cut being political is very true.
MacDonald:
The interactions between you and the black workers at the country club are loaded. Your talk with the guy you see at the flagpole in front of the Tara-looking country club building encapsulates a lot of Southern history, as does the moment where you film the black guys in the kitchen.
McElwee:
I read some hostility in those black kids. They're seventeen or eighteen years old, washing dishes for the white folks, and they're really banging those dishes around. And then the chef comes in and cocks his head, and asks me if I'm "filming all the dirt here." It's one of those amazing little moments. It's fascinating that the black guy who has been sent out to lower the flag walks the entire distance and begins undoing the rope before he looks up and notices the flag isn't there. For me there's a lot of meaning in the downward gaze. Somehow he's learned not to look up very often. That's very sad. And then he walks back to the side of the building, crossing paths with the country club member in the white dinner jacket who goes in the front door . . . pure serendipity. It's the magic of these kinds of films that now and then, with a little patience, you get a very complicated scene, shot very simply, that unfolds like a flower right in front of you.
MacDonald:
Your relationship with your father seems very problematic for you. Your father and brother seem very close because your brother is going into medicine and hopes to go into practice with your