Life is on the other side

Baboussia, grandmother’s nickname, has had a good innings. She wants to go
now, she openly admits as much to those close to her, she is ready, it’s time to go.
This declaration of death is what her family have to come to terms with, including
her grand-daughter, Elsa Quinette, a film-maker, hence her need to make her film.
This takes two directions that alternate in their progression. In other words, making
an open, articulate response to an anticipated mourning process: editing being the
answer. On one hand affectionately accompanying this old woman surrounded
by her loved ones, recording shared love out loud on the edge of life, following, for
example, the eldest son exorcising his fear and distress in a theatrical scene full of
cathartic black humour. On the other hand, giving herself scope for tangents, going
with her photographer brother to collect images of faces from elsewhere, another
final flourish, amidst other rituals on the ghats in Benares in India, where death is
crudely displayed as part of everyday life. Throughout this double journey into the
unknown, no knowledge is acquired, no secret revealved, or pain overcome. What
is discovered rather, stealthily and slowly, even unassuredly, is the logic of editing
that separates the close to and far away, France and India, the before and after
passing away; it comes back to application and this law of division at the heart
of each event in time or space. Neither wisdom nor practise, but a series of
bedazzlements. (JPR)