Maria Iorio, Raphaël Cuomo
How do you recount the facts of our time? By making a chronicle ? The facts
announced here are made up of multiple comings and goings, from one shore of
the Mediterranean to another, from yesterday to today. First there is our encounter
with Abdelhamid, a worker returning to Tunisia, a guide, witness and companion
on this voyage through space and time. His story merges with that of the recent
events in the middle of Mediterranean, a common space that has become
impassable, a fact embodied by Lampedusa. Beyond these basic yet terrible
events loom the recent, ever-increasing border closures and the invisibility of
those forgotten souls swallowed up by the sea as they tried to cross it. Far from
sensationalising, Maria Iorio and Raphaël Cuomo strive to link image, time and
journeys. The images have renewed resonance now, theirs in particular: unseen
archive footage from projects filmed in the 2000s, a magnificent Roman mosaic
in Sousse and the ambivalent movements of history of which it bears the traces
and testament. A journey haunted by ghostly bodies, marked by the insistence
of a persistent narrative voiceover which marks hiatuses and the missing, erased
or impossible images. The film’s refrain is haunted by the image of a port filmed
between dusk and dawn, unfolding the links pulsing with an all but forgotten song
hummed by Oum Kalthoum, with a melody in search of itself. Gradually the mage
emerges, laid out piece by piece, in between the cracks, just like the splendid
ancient mosaic which depicts the sea and its inhabitants, which punctuates the
film. It interlaces time and voices in numerous impregnable accents – Sicilian,
French, Italian and Arabic. From the mosaic to the melody, these motifs welcome
invite the various cycles « in search of the rests between the notes and the
intervals which link our time to another, chronicles of that time » as the film’s title
suggests. (Nicolas Feodoroff)