LAOS • 43′ a film by DIDIER NION I always looked for it on globes, a kid’s dream that didn’t cost a cent.” The Mekong carries its murmur and it is surely like a pearl placed in the middle of a great forest. Vientiane. The word itself resonates like a rare gem, poetical, at a human scale.[…]
GREAT-BRITAIN a movie by JEAN LOïC PORTRON “Voyages” in the Highlands. Jean-Loïc Portron’s travelogue describes the highlands of Sutherland, the harshness of the soil and the Lord’s violence. In the moors, people hunt grouse; in the villages they play football; on the Isle of Mull, there’s a theater. In the Highlands, people love stories so much[…]
CHILE a movie by PATRICIO GUZMAN Patricio Guzman was 13 years old and a resident of Valparaiso, Chile, when he discovered Daniel Defoe’s novel, Robinson Crusoe. In 1999, he shot this film on Robinson Island, which he had long thought fictitious. This film examines the Crusoe legend and retraces the hero’s odyssey. It also recounts the[…]
NORWAY • 42′ a film by JEAN-LOïC PORTRON A journey to Tromso, in the far north of Norway, beyond the Arctic Circle, at the edge of the inhabited world. Awaiting the night and darkness, Jean-Loïc Portron’s travelogue shows how people cope with obscurity when it invades the day to the point of eliminating it. HOW TO GET THE[…]
TUNISIA • 42′ a film by PIERRE-YVES MOULIN A trip through northern Tunisia, between Hamamet and Cape White, in the heart of autumn. The hotels are empty, but the days are still warm and inviting. This is a travel sketchbook, drawn page by page as the jouney continues and new situations are encountered, revealing little by[…]
SPAIN • 41′ a film by PATRICIO GUZMAN Patricio Guzman takes us on an intimate and sentimental stroll to discover the secrets of the Spanish capital. The magic of shadows and sky, storefronts andsweets, delicious ‘tapas’ and hidden gems awaits us above the hubbub, in the out-of-the-way places of the city. This is a real treasure hunt![…]
SWITZERLAND a film by PIERRE-YVES MOULIN Lake Geneva is Switzerland, its banks and palaces. Jean-Jacques Rousseau has made of this body of water a shrine of romanticism. But Lake Geneva also has a shore in the shadows, its French shore, with many hidden faces. From Fifi the fisherman to border inhabitants, from Lorna the pianist to[…]
MALI a movie by MICHAEL HOARE In France over the last ten years immigrant workers from the Sahel region have founded hundreds of associations to fund and promote development projects in their home villages. The film recounts three of these experiences, showing how simple guest workers have become actors in the development of their home countries.[…]
ITALY a movie by GIORGIO DI NELLA The chariot race in San Léo (Italy). Bulls harnessed to chariots from another age gallop at full speed over an 8 kilometre trail, spurred on from all sides through a whirlwind of shouts and dust. Alliances, rivalries, magicians’ tricks are the ingredients of village life that becomes ever more[…]
GREAT-BRITAIN • 80′ a movie by KIM FLITCROFT Sheffield. In the late 1980s, the steel industry closed down, the heart was torn out of the city. Ten years later, Glen the Karaoke King steals cars, Wayne, a bar owner, spots Sarah and tries to turn her into the star as “the Dirty Dancer”, and Paul, an ex-boxer,[…]