Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait (Zidane: un portrait du 21ième siècle)

Sports As Never Before: Isolating Celebrity Athletes in Football As Never Before, Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait, and Kobe Doin’ Work

“…The film’s relationship to television is established at the beginning of the film, before the opening credits, through low-resolution images and partially audible play-by-play commentary that invoke the standard presentation of the start of the match. A slogan appears over these images that introduces the themes of identification and connection through media that defines the film: “FACE/TO/FACE/AS/CLOSE/AS YOU CAN/FOR AS LONG AS IT LASTS/FOR AS LONG AS IT TAKES” (Gordon & Parreno, 2006). At the end of this sequence, the Mogwaï soundtrack and Spanish language commentary become distorted, and as the screen behind the white text goes dark, the camera appears to push in to an abstract close-up, into an expanding, pixilated field, as if the film’s gaze were penetrating the surface of the televisual image.…”

“…This construction complicates the film’s documentary status: Zidane is less interested than Football As Never Before in objectivity. Instead, the film takes its cue from an aphorism taken from an interview with Zidane that appears as one of the film’s subtitles: “THE GAME, THE EVENT, IS NOT NECESSARILY EXPERIENCED OR REMEMBERED IN ‘REAL TIME’” (Gordon & Parreno, 2006). A 21st Century Portrait is not interested in reconstructing the event “as it happened.” Instead, the film uses Zidane’s interview as a guide and attempts to reconstruct his subjective experience.…”

“…Costard trained eight 16 mm cameras on Manchester United’s George Best during a game against Coventry City on September 12, 1970. This formula was repeated 35 years later by Douglas Gordon and Phillipe Parreno for their 2006 film Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait . Gordon and Parreno trained 17 synchronized cameras on Real Madrid’s Zinedine Zidane during an April 23, 2005, league match against Villarreal.…”