LA NUIT REMUE

On the screen, black melts into the obscurity of night, where voices rise
up – the voices of young Afghan migrants somewhere on the edge of a Paris,
more guessed at than real. Bijan Anquetil plunges us into their nocturnal
world, into their night, which is very much a youthful one, full of vitality, lived
in and active. For this night, far from being sleepy, is stirring things up, as
the title borrrowed from Henri Michaux suggests, and will not let itself be
tamed.
A night that we are led to understand is also poetic and metaphorical.
A night of the unclassified, of those who are invisible as far as the administration
is concerned, but a rich night, lively, full of laughter, fears and
desires. Anquetil gives them back their visibility, ripping them out of the world
of ghosts. There is no pathos here, no horrific narrative, but the recording
– no less important – of their crucial economy of survival, their obstinate
determination to ‘make it’ or, quite simply, to arrive at the end of such a long
journey. A night lit up by images from elsewhere, from before. Anquetil’s night
shots provide an appropriate background for fragile, rudimentary images,
for memories, testimony of events captured randomly during the journey
with their own phones. A night shot through with rays of light, as a face
looms up or a chalk map drawn on the ground. But is that not part of the
promise, literally speaking, of cinema, to emerge from the depths of night
through its furtive incandesence? A promise modestly balanced here by the
simple hope of another day dawning. (NF)