Cinema
Histoire d'une rencontre
Brahim Tsaki · 1983
Synopsis
Near an oil-extraction base, somewhere in the South, two deaf and mute children meet. She is the daughter of an American engineer and follows her father wherever new flares are lit; he lives with his two sisters in a dilapidated little farm that their father neglects in favour of a chicken farm. With no common language, they understand each other. Around them, people swap appliances for jewellery, and the American father waits for his next site.
Context
The public office produced the film, but nothing in it is institutional: back from Belgium and assigned to the newsreels, its author was following rather the lesson of Tarkovsky, who used the state machine to make poetry. Eighty minutes in Eastmancolor, music by Safy Boutella, cinematography by Allel Yahiaoui. Almost no one speaks in it: the sounds of the setting, the gestures and the looks carry everything. Around the two children, the exchange is unequal, household appliances on one side, traditional dresses and jewellery on the other, and prosperity is only a façade around the flares.
Who it is for
One hour twenty, almost without a word, and so without a language barrier. It should be known that no plot is followed and that the film asks the viewer to watch rather than listen.
Prizes and reception
Étalon de Yennenga at Fespaco in 1985, presented by Thomas Sankara. The film still circulates through the French institutes, subtitled in five languages.