1968 was a very good year for Serge Bard alias Abdullah Siradj. At just 21, this Enfant Terrible of the Zanzibar group was lucky enough to be financed by the “art patroness” Sylvina Boissonnas. He made three films in 35mm, very experimental in nature. The first film was called “Destroy Yourselves.” “Fun and Games for Everyone,” Serge Bard’s second film shot in 1968, was also filmed in 35mm with Henri Alekan in control of the lights and the camera. Bard, in this second film, again leaves the field open to an incessant coming and going of Parisians attending the opening of the minimalist painter Olivier Mosset and whose exhibition consisted of 10 paintings, all alike: white with black circles painted in their center. It’s the revolution criticizing art and painting... and Serge criticizing cinema! Alekan asked LTC film labs to flash the negative before processing it, giving the film a semi-negative look. Like Warhol’s screen tests, Bard films people passing back and forth in front of the camera and paintings. Shot with a 50mm lens, we recognize the whole fashionable intelligentsia of the period: Barbet Schroeder, Amanda Lear, Jean Mascolo, Pascal Aubier and the imposing Salvador Dali who exclaims in front of one of the paintings: “It’s WERmeer!” To further confuse the soundtrack, Serge asked Barney Wilen to compose haunting psychedelic music, very present during this 55-minute film essay. - Jackie Raynal
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