One of the most brilliant and beautiful minds to reach public awareness in the XXth century, Ivan Illich, talks with Jean-Marie Domenach in Paris, in 1972.
The conversation ranges over the myth of Pandora, Epimetheus and Prometheus, the replacement of hope with expectation, compulsory schooling as the "organ of reproduction" of knowlege-capitalist societies, the need for a politics of consensually-determined upper limits on the applications of technology... and personal friendship as the bedrock of work in the world.
An enormously erudite scholar, heart opened hearing confession in his years as a Catholic priest, a guy who walked a thousand miles through Central and South America - we get to hear his mind for close to an hour.
Long a great appreciator of his work, I was privileged to meet and become dear friends with him in the last couple years of his life (he died in 2002). I have no-one whose work I hold in higher regard than Ivan. It's been a great pleasure to prepare the subtitles for this movie, because I had to listen to and consider each sentence over and over to set the time for each piece of text. That's what I suggest you do: play this video more than once; consider it most carefully, be entertained, provoked, awakened.
I send special thanks to John Verity, for making Clarke Mackey's translation available to me. Check out John's great Illich-related blog, New Scare City, at backpalm.blogspot.com
The original French version, without subtitles, is available at vimeo.com/58170701
A version with Spanish subtitles is now available at dailymotion.com/video/x4ll9st_ivan-illich-un-certain-regard_creation
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*** TRANSLATION NOTE ***
In the early discussion of Pandora, my subtitles refer 3 times to Pandora having released "words" (fr. mots) into the world. I now believe it's more likely Illich was saying Pandora released "ills", or "evils" (fr. maux), as per the standard reading of the myth. I'll redo the subtitles when workload permits.
Please don't hesitate to send me a message if you disagree with any of my translation!
