Advertisement ::

Enlarge Cartoon

Visions du Réel film festival in Nyon

Nyon, Switzerland – Sometimes a film is just a film. And sometimes films resonate within, for hours or days until the brain unscrambles the layers of message imbued by the filmmaker. That is the case of Visions du Reel film festival in Nyon, Switzerland.

The quartet of short films, “Extravios” by A. Campany Buisan; “Accepting the Image” by K. de Cock, “Father’s Prayer” by A. Horman, and “Elegie de Port-au-Prince” by A. Maigre-Touchet unfolded as disconnected ad hoc works, slowly working one with the other until my brain was able to comfortably look at them side by side.

While all of the films explored what it is to search in earnest, the first, “Extravios” was the most poignant in this, chronicling the work of Mexico City’s Bureau for missing persons, and offering a window into the lives of those in need of their services.

The film is a snapshot and does not make pretenses to either explore or develop the few protagonists introduced. Rather the subject is the searching itself, for hope, for lost loved ones, One client asks when he should return to the office to check the lists of the missing, indicating more a visit to the therapist’s office, than to an office tasked with identifying the dead and missing.

Fashion life

Immediately following, “Accepting the Image” presented a perverse twist on the search for meaning, as three young women, all transplanted New Yorkers, reflect on how they fit into the city, through the commercial lens of New York glamour.

For such an interesting city, and as a former resident, I found the depictions to be victims of the same imagery the filmmaker is ostensibly asking us to examine objectively. The first two self-portraits are in fact of women either in or around the fashion industry; while they are conscious of the fleeting nature of this life, it doesn’t make their reflections (essentially self-concerned blabbering) any more interesting.

The third portrait, of an aspiring dancer who has resigned herself to restaurant hosting, is actually interesting, in that we see her struggling to maintain her dream in the face of New York’s material wealth, while living with the daily reminder that this escaped her grasp.

This is not an easy story to tell, and while sometimes it takes an outsider to mention the “elephant in the room,” sometimes an elephant is just an elephant.

Hope in Chicago

“Father’s Prayer” is the antithesis of glamour and the epitome of hope in the face of daunting odds. Sims, father to a teenage son in Chicago narrates the literal fight to “lay a foundation” that will safeguard his family from the extreme violence and poverty of hope that haunts low-income Chicagoans. Ironically, his insurance plan for his son consists of training him to be a successful boxer.

The film is beautifully shot and scored, with broad infusions of natural sound from the city scape, including the boxing ring, and the “outer” ring of urban plight that ensconces the city.

The movie is an eye opener in its depiction of the poverty and extreme trials of life in the world’s richest nation, for residents trapped outside of the channels of access and power.

It is this contrast that makes the movie work both as an exposé of failed social inclusion, as well as a testament to Sim’s commitment to deliver his son from these surroundings. The closeups of the son’s unscarred youth are shocking when shown against the city’s unforgiving pavement and chain link fences pretending at modernity and order.

Haiti elegie

“Élégie à Port-au-Prince” is filmed in the Western hemisphere’s poorest nation, amidst the now familiar imagery of a destroyed city in utter chaos. The protagonist, a resident poet, walks through the rubble of Port-au-Prince and proclaims, “We stand on the border of life and death. Most of the city will be raised in order to build a new soul, built on death, but also on hope.”

This sentiment is somehow more inspiring than any of the numerous aid programs’ development plans for a city that has known a thousand deaths.

The Vision du Réel film festival runs through April 13 in Nyon. Check the website for film schedules.

You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.