TOURISME INTERNATIONAL

Following the historical strata and artificial paradise of the Germany of Hinterland (FID 2009) and an Africa marked by the gaze of colonization in L’hypothèse du Mokélé-Mbembé (Fid 2011), Marie Voignier continues her exploration of political fantasies and utopias in which myths, stories and facts intersect. This time the subject is North Korea. The film begins in Pyongyang, in the office of an official institution: a man hangs up his phone —cue the sound of the handset— and then the crackle of a flash when he is photographed. He reacts, he speaks, but from his moving lips no words can be heard, as if they had been deleted. This shows the gap between what is seen or shown and what may be said at work. But what can be said (and how) about this country where everything is controlled and contained and little or nothing filters through? Successive visits ensue: here an art museum, there the house where the President was born (accompanied by respectful bows). It is a silent voyage in which sounds seem to have been smothered in a country where we learn that the President himself is concerned about every detail, where painting seems to have replaced photography and all cinema is dubbed for fear of oversights. This is a journey through a country in perpetual representation in which two logics, the wish to see and the desire to show, confront one another: the logic of a government that leaves nothing to chance, and that of tourism in search of images. (NF)