Némadis, des années sans nouvelles
Pierre-Yves Vandeweerd & Benoît Mariage
Belgium | 2000 | 52 min
Language : French
Subtitle : English
The filmmaker goes in search of a group of nomadic hunters. The Némadis, who embody a type of phantom presence in the desert, are indeed there, but nobody knows where, and nobody sees them. They do not see each other either. It is through film – the images the director created of them on a previous journey – that they are allowed to recognise themselves.
The first image is of a road, a road in African village with a car going down it. It is an image from elsewhere, but also from here. Pierre-Yves Vandeweerd, who has already filmed in Mauritania and other countries of the continent, now goes in search of a memory, a place, and a group of nomadic hunters. The Némadis, who embody a type of phantom presence in the desert, are indeed there, but nobody knows where, and nobody sees them. They do not see each other either. It is through film – the images the director created of them before – that they are allowed to see themselves. Vandeweerd's questioning starts here: what is it that makes a person, a place, an existence? The being eroded by its own disappearance progresses on its journey through film: the director, the people filmed, the very images of the film remind us of the ephemeral nature of reality.
Luciano Barisone
