Paul Marchand was born on 1 October in 1961. in Amiens, France. He studied at the Institute for political science in Grenoble. Paul started his career as a journalist in a small private radio station ‘Radio 100’ managed by Hélène Tavelle. At the same time, he took criminology lessons and did internships at the hospital morgue. Barely 22 years old, he abandoned his studies and left to report in Beirut during their civil war. Six months later, he was a correspondent for Radio-France and several Canadian media. For many years, he was the only Western journalist to practice in West Beirut, on the Muslim side. The French government considering that he is in danger, forcibly expels him to Cyprus: Paul fled and returned to West Beirut.
In 1987, he narrowly escaped the hostage-taking in which Roger Auque was a victim. On 20 January, gunmen kidnaped a French journalist in Beirut, but Paul slipped out of the grasp of his abductors and escaped as they opened fire. Both were covering the latest attempt by Anglican Church envoy Terry Waite to free hostages in Lebanon. Paul who had freed himself moments before on a nearby street, said later on French television, “I shouted at Roger: “Get out of there! Get out!” But Auque was unable to escape. Paul told Radio Monte Carlo, his employer, that the assailants shot at him as he fled. He said he will stay in West Beirut. ”I can’t leave now; Roger is my friend.”
After the civil war in Lebanon, Paul came to Bosnia and Herzegovina and he reported from the city of Sarajevo, that was under siege, in the period from 1991 to 1993. He was rather unconventional journalist. He was not interested in press conferences where information were served, instead he went for information on his own going event to the morgue every day where he counted the dead by himself. He needed that the truth about Sarajevo reach the whole world. In Beirut, he learned to live in a closed world, in the world where people did not have right to true information. Sarajevo was closed and he considered it as a part of Europe, he insisted on the fact that information about Sarajevo needed to be known. He was not wearing a flak jacket and was not afraid. Paul was critical towards the use of armored cars, flak jackets and helmets, and though he did not have the clout of a big media organization behind him, he became one of the best-known figures among the journalists in the Holiday Inn-largely for his eccentricity. Almost always immaculately dressed, often donning a straw hat and constantly puffing on large Cuban cigars, he could be brusque and uncompromising. A self-declared ‘artisan’, he refused to wear a flak jacket because he could ‘not find one that matched his clothes’.
Paul drove through the alley of snipers in his ‘Ford Sierra’ with the inscription ”Don’t waste your bullets. I’m immortal” on it, and from which the tacts of the Rolling Stones’ song ‘Sympathy for the Devil’ blared. It was a totally surreal scene. Marchand genuinely took risks and was often scathing of what he regarded as journalists becoming detached from the reality of the conflict by traversing Sarajevo in armored cars while wearing flak jackets and helmets. Paul stated that armored cars were merely ‘status symbols’ while railing against their use. “There are people who even wear a vest and flak protection [and drive] an armored car” Paul said. He learned to adapt to the ‘rules of the game’ in and around the hotel and in Sarajevo. He took, no doubt, significant risks, but maintained that his approach was authentic and thus justified.
He considered Holiday Inn to be ‘One of most peculiar hotels ever. Its cavernous lobby was freezing cold, dark and dismal. The upper stories were shot to hell, with gaping holes to the outside world. The upper stories were closed to guests. ‘Nevertheless, it was the ‘safest’ accommodation to be found in the city. One of the most famous anecdotes from the war hotel was when Paul slide down the rope from the 5th floor directly to the hotel lobby while all the present people applauded and celebrated his action. “Paul was somehow a little bit crazy. He brought this alpinist equipment to Sarajevo and we all wandered for what sake he did it. We were all focused on the best protection, for God’s sake, there was a war around us, but he lived it in his own way. One day, that legendary incident happened and was very welcomed by the public. That was Paul, he loved to ripple stubbornness, while leaving the impression of a stuffy, disciplined guy”, states Paul Lowe, British photojournalist who knew Paul Marchand very well.
“Everything that one has ever heard of him was quite a truth. None knows whereas it was a suicidal mission, but often he challenged the death. Everyone took care how to protect themselves, but he did not care. He drove totally unprotected car, he wasn’t wearing a helmet that was at his disposal. Although, he wore every day a tidy ironed white shirt and smoked Cuban cigar – none ever understood how he managed it. He always took care to look perfect and I personally think that he invested too much effort in it. As if he was obsessed by the way he looked and the perception of himself in public places. And when he was sending the reports, as he lived the role so his reports were a bit melodramatic. I sat next to him, and he was shouting on the satellite phone, as if he wanted to transmit the dramatic situation from the streets of Sarajevo” says Paul Lowe.
Slobodanka Boba Lizdek, a journalist and marketing specialist, remembers her first encounter with Paul Marchand, in 1992. “We met in a very peculiar way. Holiday In was home for hundreds of foreign journalists who reported from the war city of Sarajevo. I was working as a translator and he was trying to reach me for a long time. He was always on the run and I thought he was just a Bosnian who spoke French. Actually, I was surprised when I learned that he was French. Although, at one moment he called me on the phone and asked me to work with him which I accepted without knowing who I was dealing with. When we met in front of building of Bosnian television, I told him that I would have never come if I had known who he was. It was very funny to him, and afterwards we have continued to work together.” Even if she didn’t like him at first, they fell in love.
“In October 1993. We were about to go to a journalist mission. We were in the car with our colleague Philip, a cameraman, they sat in the front seat and I was on the back seat only that very day, because I was always seated in front with him. The whole situation looked like a movie to me, the very moment when he dropped his glasses, pulled a hand break with his left hand, I saw that he was holding his right arm with the left one and that he has got out of the car. I thought for a moment that I was injured too, I checked up myself, saw that I was ok and have got out after him. We called Phillip but he did not react at all. When I saw that he was standing just like that on the road in the middle of nowhere, where there is not a soul, injured by a bullet from PAM, of 12,7mm, I crushed him to the ground and gave his first aid, put a bandage on his wound, just to stop the bleeding, since all scene looked terrifying. Afterwards, I started to hit him intuitively all over the body in order for him to stay conscious. At one moment, he looked at me and asked: “Why are you hitting me, what did I do to you?” I knew that he had to stay conscious, at all costs. And I kept hitting him with all my strength, wherever I could” – she remembers.
“When we have arrived to the hospital, the doctor could not believe that Paul was on his feet, because he had lost almost all his blood. Besides, he thought that I was injured, because I was covered with his blood and pieces of his body. When he had asked me what I did, I said: ‘”Doctor, I beat the hell out of him”.
But, after he was wounded, he had to be evacuated urgently to France where he had over 60 surgeries. Their destinies separated, but they stayed in touch all the time. Then, he turns to literature spending the subsequent years writing novels (he had to learn to write with his left hand after losing the ability to do so with his right), but struggled to cope with the reality of being unable to continue doing the work he loved. That movie life of a war reporter was translated into memoirs ‘Sympathy for the devil’ that Marchand published soon after he left Sarajevo. “When I first read Paul’s book, I told him it was a movie material and it seems that everything then began. The idea started to develop in 2005 when Paul began to write the screenplay with Guillaume Vigneault and Guillaume de Fontenay.” says Slobodanka Lizdek.
Paul Marchand took his own life in 2009. He was 48. His affection to devil came to the top. White ironed shirts will never be wore again with such self-confidence by any war reporter. “Then, I thought that the idea of the movie was over, but in 2012 the making of it restarted”, says Slobodanka, who was the inspiration and the part of Paul’s life. The Memoirs which title has roots in the famous Rolling Stones song, Marchand turned into screenplay for the movie but has never finished it. Guillaume de Fontenay, continued from the point where he stopped.
The movie director Guillaume de Fontenay tried to collect funding for the movie and he finally succeeded in 2018 when he made maybe the most serious cinematic image of the Siege of Sarajevo. ‘The Sympathy for the Devil’ brings on the big screens the story of Paula Marchand, French journalist and war reporter who cope on daily basis with the brutality of war and life in the besieged city of Sarajevo. Besides, the director took a look at his private life and in a way perpetuated a singular love story between the war reporter and a young Sarajevo girl Boba who, amongst other, saved his life.
“At the time, the war in Bosnia was intimately linked to the voice of Paul Marchand, whose stories I heard from Radio-Canada,” recalls the filmmaker who offers his first film. It is a conflict that shocked me; to see that the international community has left like this for four years of siege where dozens of civilians, on average, died every day. I still have this problem with our collective apathy: The same thing is repeated in Syria.” Guillaume de Fontenay
Co-producer of ‘Sympathy for the Devil’ Amra Bakšić Čamo considers that a war reporter cannot separate himself from his subjects. “His book is thus more interesting since it depicts a journalist who leave a typical journalist atmosphere. Suddenly, he had friends who lose members of their family and are starving to death. For most journalists it is a sort of blitzkrieg: they come there for a while, write their story, go back home and strive not to bring those experiences into their everyday life. But for those who remained and were in Sarajevo for a long period of time, their lives have changed forever.” explains Amra, and afterwards she asks: “How did they manage to draw a line between objectivity and lives of the Sarajevo people? I think that we must always be conscious of the fact that we are not only making movies for tomorrow; we make movies for eternity. So, it is not only the matter of the direct impact of the movie distribution in Bosnia and Herzegovina or France in the present, but of the fact how will be this movie perceived 40 years after its premiere”, Amra Bakšić Čamo concludes.
“In Beirut as in Sarajevo, every morning I set sail for death on my journey of destruction. Journalist, I had to tell, in words of ruins, in an unfinished language, that wars are nothing but a little noise on a lot of silence. A temporary crash when the silence becomes too unbearable. A dream of a better world, even if the dream is obscene and turbulent.”
Paul Marchand
“In one of his books, when he describes the very moment of wounding, he remembers, evokes our love and says, “We have never had time to talk about love in war”. It was maybe unworthy of that sole situation to even talk about. I simply felt so secure next to him, and in fact, I was not afraid of anything event not the first time when he suggested to me to walk through the Sniper Alley – the main street that no one walked through except crazy journalists. I said, “Ok, no problem.” He asked me if I was scared. I told him I wasn’t, if we go there then we go there, everything is OK. The only important thing for us was to be together and that he knows, if we are not together, what happens to me, or if I do not work, that he comes to see if I am good, do I have enough food – just as simple as that. As he wrote, simply, love was not worthy to be talked about in war because we had other worries, but it was there, it was with us and around us and between us.” – says Boba. “We are bound forever and I think that this kind of relationship that we had cannot be described by the existing words. Even though he is not alive, he is omnipresent in my life. We are always together, even in his books. We are doomed to eternity”, she says.
Behind this brave man who came to the most dangerous place on earth, to convey the truth about the sufferings and killings of Sarajevans, there will be this book, this film ‘Sympathy for the Devil’ which will tell a story of a great love during the war. Love that ignited amidst war in the city that was about to be burnt and dead, in a city that survived all the bullets and bombs. Love was stronger than all of it. Slobodanka Boba Lizdek knows that very well.
People say that during his studies and traineeship practice, he used to visit hospitals and morgues. Was this a very beginning of a wish to die, a dissimulated suicidal feeling that lived for the sake of hope that, one of the insane, crazy and senseless situations which he faced consciously, would be the ONE? Or is it just a proof that the one among us who seem to be the craziest are in fact the only ones worthy of being?
“I love morgues of the cities in war”, Paul wrote in his memoirs, like many other weird thoughts that make the reader think about it. Why did he suicide and why did he put himself often into very dangerous situations?
Scene from the documentary film ‘The Troubles We’ve Seen’ made in 1994.
PAUL MARCHAND was born on 1 October 1961 in Amiens, France.
He left us on 20 June 2009 in Paris, France.
Cover Photo: Emmanuel Ortiz
Special thanks to: Slobodanki Boba Lizdek
Translations: Asmir i Edina Demir
Sources: Klix.ba, Oslobodjenje.ba, Azra.ba & BalkanInsight.com
Music used: ‘Erik Satie – Gymnopédie No.1’
The song is permitted for non-commercial use under license:
Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)
© 2020 Sniper Alley. All Rights reserved.
