LE BRUIT DU TEMPS, MESSAOUD

In her previous films Hic rosa, partition botanique [Hic rosa, Botanical Score] (FID 2007), a poetical tribute to rebellion through the figure of Rosa Luxembourg, then Face au vent, partition buissonnière [Facing the Wind, Evading Score] (FID 2010), in which she went back over her own career, Anne-Marie Faux turned the cinema into a place of persistence against renunciations. The Sound of Time, Messouad goes in the same direction. It all starts with a promise made in 1986 to a child on his Parisian hospital bed, to go and see his city, Bejaia in Algeria. Till this day in 2011 when the promise was fulfilled: “Now, there you are, you’re going to see, to listen to the sound that time makes, how it goes by or doesn’t go by hereabout.” On screen, Bejaia filmed today in super-8, mute images of the city: the street, plants, flowers, faces. On sound, a voice, his, extremely tense, restrained anger: the events, the words, the names fold up from one time, one language and one country to the other, revealing those “stateless meetings” beyond coincidences. Readings, historical events as well as memories are summoned, and thus the cinema, love, time, violence, fidelity, intuition, childhood are captured, thrown away, stirred… Words mixed with the hubbub of life and streets, with the sound of the wind, and silence, too. Images and sounds unbind as an invitation to better link together, in this film shaped like an address to oneself, to the others, to keep the spirit of rebellion awake. (NF)