Mescaline

The Kurdish lover is Oktay, the man with whom I share my life. We went to his village in Kurdistan, a region brought to a standstill by war. At this place, loving someone can become confused with having a hold over them. It is with humor that the characters featured in this film find ways, within their community, to affirm that they truly exist. A shaman goes into trance in front of the television, a hermit dreams of marriage, a shepherdess wants to leave the top of the mountain, soldiers watch over the village, a man from Europe goes off to request the hand of a young woman. It is through these situations that we discover the reality of families doing what they can to find a way of living together, to take the best – or the worst – from each moment.

For the 30th anniversaire of FIDMarseille about thirty directors have done us the honor of offering us some very beautiful short films.

It is an observation of the male body, sometimes solitary, especially in groups, perceived through a codified choreography.

It is an observation of the male body, sometimes solitary, especially in groups, perceived through a codified choreography.

Rituels brings together five channels of video moving from a pro-Palestinian demonstration in the Paris streets to a private S&M soirée in the same city, to its suburbs and a Kurdish community gathering, then far away to a Mexican hilltop, and to Turkish Kurdistan.

Rites and gatherings of a Protestant bourgeois family.

What kind of habits does one develop when confronted with extreme situations on a daily basis ? In a geriatric department, the management of this borderline state becomes the structuring element of everyday life. The staff focuse on technical gestures to keep bodies at bay. Nurses use a specialized vocabulary, which serves less to express a feeling than to domesticate the violence of it, reducing the disorder of emotions to a reduced number of formulas. Patients use devious means to assert their independence. A woman fiercely refuses to take a shower. This is an ultimate form of resistance, to feel that she still has decision-making power over her body. Raymond withdraws to an inner world. He creates stories about the objects he sees in his room, confusing past and present, dreams and reality.

Karima is a young dominatrix whom I filmed in the intimacy of her family, with her friends, and during sessions. Karima’s sadomasochistic practice has a maternal and generous propensity. The body appears alternately as a source of pleasure and pain, an object of adoration or disgust, a vehicle for emotions or an impenetrable border.

Two young women used their own body as a war weapon by participating in a hunger strike in the Turkish prisons in the year 2000. This hunger strike was repressed in a bloody way by the army. Between portraits and archives images, a reflection on the resistance and the sacrifice of the individual in front of the violence of the State.

A rattlesnake hunt. A rodeo. Gogo dancers. A love song. Two women and seven dogs. Such are the memories of an elusive narrator, a failed businessman, absent father, lost lover, who returns home after several years spent in Mexico.

Landless Mexican peasants invent a new shape of fight by using their body as place of political and social resistance. Since the government does not want to recognize their existence, they will demonstrate completely naked in the streets of Mexico City, twice a day, until they are proved right.

Ovidie is a nineteen years old X actress. For a year, I accompanied her on film shootings and in her private life. With her, I question the different modes of relation to others : the touch, the language, the complexity of relationships when work, sex, love and friendship coexist.

The Kurdish rebels films their own everyday life on the border of Iraq and Turkey. An almost organic camera records the sensations. The war images in Kurdistan confront with the images of Kurdish refugees in the streets of Paris, questioning various strategies of construction of a community identity, tinged with idealism and with romanticism in the heart of the political and social violence.