From colonization to the sixth extinction, the film of filmmakers fixes unforgettable images and stories in a poetic, scintillating and ruthless documentary film.
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Deeply poetic, human, the cinema of Nicolas Klotz and Elisabeth Perceval is like a flamboyant mirror, referring to the world its renewed brutality, while having a sparkling, at the edge of the frame, some resistant and luminous perspectives.
From the colonial era to the sixth extinction (animal species, natural habitats, due to human intervention causing pollution and global warming, etc.), when the house burns accelerates time and fixes unforgettable images (animals Passed to the camera filter, sublime ghosts in the making), as extending the work of Chris Marker (1921-2012) on new paths.
Visual poem
Elisabeth Perceval at writing, Nicolas Klotz on the camera: political reflection and visual experimentation constitute the matrix of the work of the tandem of directors, which was the subject of a retrospective at the Center Pompidou, in Paris, In December 2021. Among the thirty films, let us quote Paria (2000), where we embark on a RATP bus with precarious young people, a few hours before the year 2000; The injury (2004), in immersion-fiction alongside refugees landed from Roissy; Finally, more recently, the heroic moor. The border burns (2018), journey in the Calais jungle, incandescent tribute to its “residents”, ending in a sublime solo by the sea.
The retrospective had given rise to the production of a new film, we say Revolution, an order from the Beaubourg Cinema team which asks each of its guests (Kelly Reichardt, Albert Serra, Bertrand Bonello…) to do Update on his work, by freely answering this question: “Where are you?” Cinema version of When the house burns, the film will be distributed indoors by Shellac, in early 2023.
We can let ourselves be carried by this visual poem, in three parts respectively shot in Brazzaville, Barcelona and Sao Paulo (“Race 1”, “Race 2”, “Race 3”, like so many hunts to the old man and contemporary). But it is not uninteresting to know some references that inspired filmmakers and feed the shooting.
The film begins with a terrible story, taken from the work Red Leaves (1930), by William Faulkner. A master has just died and he must be buried with his dog, his horse and his slave … The racing of the fugitive, to escape his loss out, echoed some inhabitants of the Republic of Congo, a young actor Remembering such a practice of the time of his great-grandfather. Thus goes the cinema of Klotz and Perceval, drawing in reality their tireless thirst to debate and show.