the six sides of a brick

55 Sienna Street, Warsaw, is a very ordinary place, a courtyard where people hang out washing and children play, except for one thing: a brick wall connecting two apartment buildings. This is the only vestige of the former Jewish ghetto. “This wall is dedicated to the memory of people, not any particular group, because I’m not a Jew-lover, I’m just a human being.” These are the words of a nameless individual filmed by Damien Monnier, an old man who decided to restore this vestige after coming to live here around 1950, following a spell in the gulag which made the concentration camp experience very real to him.  Since those days, he has sat under his tree like an old sage, waiting to tell the story and hand on his wisdom to locals and tourists who stop by, stand in silence, stroke the bricks. In voice-off, the filmmaker reminds us of the story of the ghetto, uses a mixed technique to share the process of his apprehension of this place, all of which makes Six faces d’une brique a powerful reflection on memory as substance and space to be measured.

Emmanuel Chicon

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