CHILE • 100′ a film by PATRICIO GUZMAN « I recall September 11, 1973, that dark day when America instigated a coup d’état to bring down the pacifist and democratic revolution that was taking place in a faraway country, Chile, my homeland. Salvador Allende, the President of the Republic, that “son of a bitch‚” as Richard Nixon[…]
FRANCE • 26′ a movie by JEAN LOïC PORTRON Awhite city, surprisingly modern. A flat, linear landscape where the only relief is found in silos, cranes and crossbeams… Lorient is a port. In 1666, a royal charter gave “the Compagnie des Indes” a few acres of land to create a harbor destined for trade with[…]
PORTUGAL • 27′ a movie by JEAN LOïC PORTRON In Portugal, the Alentejo is, like Andalusia or Sicily, classically a land of large landowners. For six months of the year, vegetation, animals and the parched land await the rains. When summer comes to its end, pouring storms drench the landscape. The rivers which have been dry[…]
FRANCE • 27′ a film by JEAN LOïC PORTRON On the left bank of River Durance is a town barely larger than a village. On the other bank is a motorway. On the one side is inertia and indifference to the passing time, on the other side is activity and exchanges. For centuries, people moved slowly. Distances[…]
FRANCE • 24′ a movie by RADHA JAGANATHEN For a long time, sugar cane was the island’s principal resource, it was at the heart of the countryside. Today, everything has shifted. The centre has become peripheral. The beautiful, the useful is no longer the plantation, the fields of cane but the beach or the mountain summits[…]
SPAIN • 28′ a movie by JEAN LOïC PORTRON Less than 25 years ago, Carchuna was deserted. Over a few years, the landscape has changed dramatically: plastic greenhouses cover the plain, men come down in groves from the surrounding mountains, villages are built. The desert has become a kind of Eldorado. But the gold here is[…]
GERMANY • 26′ a movie by JEAN LOïC PORTRON The twin villages of Treis and Karden (800 inhabitants) lie opposite each other, joined by a bridge across the Moselle River. This countryside is remarkable because it embodies a meeting between two contradictory forces: movement and inertia. Movement because the villages are situated in the base of[…]
FRANCE • 26′ a movie by JEAN LOïC PORTRON In the middle of the 19th century, when the idea of holiday resorts was developing, Etretat, a simple fishing village, became a fashionable beach. Sunbathers invaded the coast; fishermen became swimming teachers, gardeners or servants. Even today, the proprietors of the villas and townhouses, descendants of those[…]
NORWAY • 28′ a movie by JEAN LOïC PORTRON Tromsø is one of the northernmost cities in the world. Only a few Siberian territories, and the outermost point of Alaska, lie farther to the north. The proximity of the Pole produces abrupt changes: in November, the sun no longer appears above the horizon; it will[…]
FRANCE • 26′ a movie by JEAN LOïC PORTRON Fos-sur-Mer, a small village hidden away near the mouth of the Rhône River, became in 1965 the centre of one of the largest building sites in the world. The film depicts the confrontation between the traditional landscape of the Camargue and a gigantic industrial development project, now[…]