Early 20th century Philippines. The sounds of war signal the arrival of the Americans. A mother and son flee to the mountains, hoping for a quiet life. One day, the son discovers a wounded woman in the middle of the forest, and decides to bring her home.
How do Europeans deal with their recent dark history (the wars, dictatorships and occupations)? What traces are etched?
What follows is a black-and-white silent film set in the 1890s during the brewing Filipino revolution against Spanish colonialism. A series of tragic and comic sequences tells the Three Ages of an Indio (“common man”) as he progresses from boy bell ringer in a village church to teenage revolutionary to adult theater actor rehearsing a popular Spanish play.
An adult male, 155 centimeters tall, of dark complexion; presents frontal baldness, regular eyebrows, brown eyes, wide nose, big mouth with thick lips, slight upper lip hair and big ears with free hanging lobes. He shows paralysis in the lower limbs, an open sore in the left gluteus and an old wound from a firearm projectile in the back; he moves in a wheelchair.
A visit to the Louvre in Paris commentated by an actor reading Cézanne.
Rita is named after a famous American movie star whom her late, former actress grandmother once adored. She lives in one of Manila’s oldest districts with her busy mother and entrepreneurial aunt. Years later, she is still the same girl enamoured with television, now also tending to her aunt’s stall selling pirated DVD movies. Elsewhere, there survives footages of a movie done before the war.
Denis Lavant reads long passages from Luis Buñuel's semi-autobiographical "My Last Sigh". From this text, without film excerpts, Laurence Garret travels in the footsteps of Buñuel, from Calanda to Zaragoza, Madrid to Toledo, Spain to Mexico.
In the late 1970s, Marcel fled Catalonia to avoid conscription into the Spanish military. For 30 years he has been living in the tropical forests of Costa Rica, where he hosts ayahuasca ceremonies for young seekers from the West.
It is the end of an era. Marco, Bissoon and their friends have spent their lives working for a sugar factory that is due to close. Sugarcane is no longer profitable so it will soon be replaced by luxurious villas, golf courses and playgrounds for rich tourists, making this area forbidden for the working class. As their world seems to fall apart around them, some struggle to find their places in their strange new surroundings, while others decide to leave the country. For Bissoon, the closing of the factory brings frustration, emptiness and neo-colonial malaise. Meanwhile Marco gets intrigued by Devi, the wife of the authoritarian man overseeing the demolition of the factory. Continuing his work of putting Mauritius on the cinematic map, David Constantin tells a story of a move from tradition to modernity. In doing so, he offers a view behind the postcard façade of paradise, portraying the world less picture perfect than you might think.
Five, even six, variations on a theme, commentary and interpretation of the same photograph. An exercise to tell and summarize the history of the Cinémathèque française.
