Born on January 12, 1945 in Brittany, he first studied sociologiy before he was led to the “militant film ” by the work of Dziga Vertov, in 1971, he founded the political film group Tor e Benn. From 1973- 77 he was teaching “sociology of mass media ” at the University of Rennes. He then worked one year as film director in Saint-Cadou, Atelier de Creation before he went to Paris to continue his studies and to follow lectures by Jean Rouch. In 1977 he got his Ph.D. with the film Le cochon qui s ' en dédit (The pig that cancelled), shot on Super-8, and received the Georges-Sadoul Award. Jean-Louis Le Tacon enjoyed a place in the spotlights that was as sensational as it was short-lived. Le Monde wrote about the “wonderful direction". Télérama was taken by “this small... piercingly nonconformist lampoon that reeks of sulphur" while Sono- vision placed it beside Bunuel. Eleven years later the film hasn 't grown a single grey hair. Le Tacon has lost none of his expressive powers. In fact, his work keeps developing... Only who cares? Like many of his collègues, to earn a living as director Le Tacon makes films and other works on commission, for television. Still, he never loses himself in the conventional framework, and he's immuned to the imbecility of cliches. He knows how to preserve his inte-grity. He produces broad-minded and original works which remain true to his intentions, tastes and himself, and which purposely ignore commercial competitiveness. Is that why his name and work receive so little attention? At any rate it seems that Le Tacon hasn't won for himself the seat that his first success promised him; nor the recognition justified by his later works. Why? This disappearing from the profession is symptomatic of the difficulty that film has, trying to regenerate itself. It fails to accept and sustain its innovators, or to connect them with outside influences. But Jean-Louis Le Tacon has not disappeared for everybody. He has simply chosen a different direction by devoting himself to making videos. “ Maybe I 'm just afraid of the highly specialized division of labour in the film industry, the incredible budgets... But then I'm not obsessed with feature-length films, the Saturday night film... ” Is there room enough in the industry for more than simply the traditional feature-length films? One wonders. But Jean-Louis Le Tacon refuses to be pigeon-holded. He works on a fashion show by Jean-Paul Gaultier as well as on a piece of choreography by Daniel Larrieu. He then changes from contemporary sculpture to archeology, from documentary films to films for the cinema, and from rock to comics. His socalled 'evasiveness'is merely an optical illusion, the result of his scope. “I believe in posing experimental problems, in the same way that I do through experimental film and video. The experimental prefe-rence in art is the way to hit upon what didn 't exist before, some-thing different; the danger being you can destroy the art. For me videos by authors stand in the foreground, meaning involvements with audio-visual forms anchored to a particular theme. This emotional, historic or cosmic anchor is there to open the door of the work for the viewer. I have the feeling that a new genre of film will be born. We call it the “video film" or “electronic cinema ”, The length of the work correspond directly to the use and misuse of the electronic material. “Extrait de naissance” (or birth certificate) is an early attempt to prove that a thousand shortenings are possible when translating a single emotional effect. The theoretical debate is not over. With their film (1989) Le Tacon and Jonier signed at the same time a manifesto which, not intended to be provoking, unravels in this manner: “The old conventions of storytelling no longer work... Clearly irreversible is the fact that tomorrow's film will be either electronic, or not at all. ” Le Tacon's search, however, never follows only form. If he goes further it hardly becomes abstraction. He studies, on a concrete and trivial level, what life has to offer. While disturbing well-buried secrets in Entrez done! (Then come in!) he films, using an explosive mixture of tact, brutality, timidity and exhibitionism, everything that “one does not do". “What I like about video is it's immediacy, it's quick accessibility: you see the picture right away, take it home and put it in the monitor. It's an activity like working in the studio of a painter ... Personally, I like it there. ” Even though one knows that reality surpasses fiction, the filmmaker is still primarily interested in fiction. The same rule applies to Le Tacon. He mixed the dreamworld with a naked reality from the very start. Whatever he may do he never turns his back entirely on documentaries.
From an article by Francois Ode