85 min.,16 mm & 35 mm, B/W & Color, 2.39:1, English, 2022
Screening format: 35 mm / DCP
Theatrical release (France): July 19, 2023
December 1919. The American government deports 249 anarchists and radicals on the Buford, nicknamed the “Soviet Ark.” Five years later, this same ship becomes the set of Buster Keaton’s slapstick comedy The Navigator.
A Film by: Noah Teichner / Produced by: Gaëlle Jones (Perspective Films) / Optical Printing, Rostrum Camera, Lab Work: Noah Teichner / Cinematography (Finland & Russia): Ville Piippo / Letterpress Printing: Eric Nunes (Ampersand Press Lab) / Editing: Emmanuel Falguières, Noah Teichner / Colorist: Catherine Libert / Sound Editing, Mixing: Mikaël Barre / Made at the artist-run film lab L’Abominable - Navire Argo
With the support of: CNC, Région Ile de France - FoRTE, Fondation des Artistes, Hors Pistes (Centre Pompidou), SCAM (Brouillon d’un rêve - documentaire), Art & Camera Prize (Festival de l’histoire de l’art, 2017).
“It was on the Buford, the ocean liner used by Buster Keaton in 1924 for his film The Navigator, that 249 anarchists, including Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman, were deported from the United States to Russia five years earlier . . . during a period known as the first Red Scare.” - Érik Bullot (Trafic Almanach 2023)
“The two stories, one ‘true’ and the other imagined, unite to give shape to another captivating and haunted odyssey, in which the Buford is transformed into a ghost ship whose memory overtakes Keaton’s film from within.” - Élizabeth Franck-Dumas (Libération)
“The form of Teichner’s film is, like the famous movie-hall dream sequence in Keaton’s Sherlock Jr., almost surrealist: a split-screen juxtaposition of The Navigator and various archival materials chronicling the deportees’ journey on the same vessel.” - Jamie Aylward (Film Comment)
“Navigators’ humor and sensuousness offer a refreshing take on the essay form.” - Raphaël Nieuwjaer (Cahiers du cinéma)
“An anarchist comedy, a gag-like tragedy, the film is delirious in its precision” - Luc Chessel (Libération)
