Zizou, iconographics
By Susan Gerhard
The surprise ending to a World Cup whose chosen theme was “a time to make friends” clearly divided audiences — including the 15 to 20,000 who waved their chosen flags at San Francisco’s Dolores Park last Sunday. But no one can complain about a lack of narrative satisfaction. Zinedine Zidane’s goodbye tour at the tournament turned on plot elements familiar to anyone who’s followed his game, but built them into a wholly new drama. Who knew, when the conceptual-art project/nonfiction film “Zinedine Zidane, a 21st Century Portrait” played Cannes last spring — a real-time game-film focusing solely on Zidane that climaxes in the player’s red-card ejection — its star would create his own summer sequel? As an addendum to the previous SF360 soccer list, we offer links to four experiments in translating Zidane to screen.
1. Preview clip of “Zinedine Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait”
No insight into when Turner Prize-winning Douglas Gordon and and his Mogwai-inflected film (co-directed by Philippe Parreno) will hit the U.S. But it does feature Zidane reportedly waxing poetic on time, memory, and the goal as images of head/leg/boot/field float across the screen during a Real Madrid-Villareal Spanish league match of 2005. Peter Bradshaw writes for the Guardian UK that “By the end, Zidane has achieved the charisma and mystery of the hero from some lost Shakespeare play.” Which play that might be is yet to be determined.
Zidane, Ronaldo, and Beckham star in a Real Madrid-produced film about… Real Madrid! The fact-fiction hybrid comes out on DVD from First Run Features Aug. 22.
3. “ZIDANE a new way to solve problems… do it like Zidane”
Two-million hits at press time, this Zidane-inspired, German-produced one-minute mini-comedy on YouTube has apparently hit a nerve.
Earn your own Red Cards with this vaguely machinima-inspired Zidane v. Materazzi home-screen mouse-clicking video game — one, apparently, of many.
07.14.2006