Two construction workers wander through a hybrid natural-industrial zone by day and night, exploring and discovering seemingly insignificant details. This experimental film is a walking tour through a possibly post-apocalyptic world where the familiar seems alien, invoking a sense of mystery and wonder towards the natural world and our relationship to it. It is a slow, totally visual work with phantasmic nighttime sequences and attention to the tactile (a piece of shale, moss, a shell) as the two men touch, feel, and listen to the world around them. Unsettling and eerie at times, the film never explicitly answers any questions, yet their journey is oddly compelling. With an atmosphere reminiscent of Tarkovsky’s Stalker, the film forces us to find our own interpretations of their explorations.
Community Partner
Luca Ruch, Olivier Matthey
Switzerland
2021
In French with English subtitles
Featured in:
International Shorts: Personal Journeys
The films in this shorts program are all about discovery. Beautiful and thought-provoking voyages of internal and external discovery that honour relations and history, while encountering stimuli that promote a new understanding of self.
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Late Fame
Based on a novella by Arthur Schnitzler (Eyes Wide Shut) this is a sly, poignant comedy about vanity and art from director Kent Jones, starring Willem Dafoe as a mailman belatedly acclaimed for a book of poetry he wrote in his youth.
Memory of Princess Mumbi
In 2093, a filmmaker arrives in the African village of Umata, where he meets Princess Mumbi, a woman torn between love, legacy, and the future of storytelling. It's a fabulous genre-blending fable about memory, invention and cinematic resistance.
Lessons of Darkness
Werner Herzog's unforgettable documentary reveals the unfolding disaster of the Kuwaitian oil fields in flames in 1991 as a sweeping inferno of mesmerizing power.
Beau Travail
Inspired by Herman Melville's Billy Budd, Claire Denis' transfixing Beau Travail is set in East Africa. Sgt Galoup (Denis Lavant) reflects on his time in the French Foreign Legion, and the impact of the handsome Sentain (Gregoire Colin).
But I'm a Cheerleader
Megan (Natasha Lyonne) is the perfect All-American Girl, or so she thinks. That is until she’s shipped off to conversion therapy. This pitch black comedy is wrapped in a saccharine bow, featuring the icon herself, RuPaul, as a conversion counsellor.
Credits
Producer
Delphine Jeanneret
Screenwriter
Andrea Bordoli
Cinematography
Andrea Bordoli
Editor
Andrea Bordoli, Noemie Ruben
Original Music
Marco Guglielmetti, Andrea Bordoli
Director
Andrea Bordoli
Andrea Bordoli’s research and practice lies at the intersection between anthropological theory, film, and visual art. His works have been presented in academic settings and exhibited in film festivals and art spaces nationally and internationally. He is currently pursuing a research-creation PhD in Media Anthropology at the University of Bern, Switzerland. Since January 2022, he has been a visiting artist-researcher in the Anthropology Department of McGill University.