With this film, the Rotterdam Film Festival is paying homage to the Dutch-born jack-of-all-trades Wim van Leer, who died on 13 April 1992.îChris Marker’s Description d’un combat was Van Leer’s first film as producer. The title of this documentary about Israel is derived from a novella by Kafka, Beschreibung eines Kampes. In it, Kafka describes the nocturnal struggle of two men on a moral, philosophical and ethical level, ending with a real fight. In the morning it becomes clear that it is the struggle that we all fight with ourselves. Marker wanted to describe in these terms the internal struggle that the growing nation Israel (the film dates from 1960) has in its quest for its own identity.Marker prepared himself for the film by travelling around Israel on a Vespa. During his journey he took eight hundred photos. These formed the basis for the form and substance of Description d’un combat; the screenplay was only written after all the shooting was completed. Wim van Leer postulated that the film looked at ‘what we think foreigners think of Israel’.The France Observateur wrote at the time: ‘…Israel’s history, its geography and its people, with their struggles, their rights, their duties, told by a person who realises the import of the words he uses.’ Description d’un combat won the Golden Beer in 1960 in Berlin.
