The Eternals
LES ÉTERNELS
Belgium, France, 2017, 75'
Nagorno-Karabakh is an Armenian enclave that has been in conflict with Azerbaijan for decades. On the scene of this war, between the soldiers’ trenches, the drills, and the mountainous lands and deserts, Vandeweerd’s film turns into something else, i.e., a poetic and melancholy reflection on the idea of eternity, suspended time – the eternally reiterated – capable of making the viewer experience the hell of those who have lived with war forever.
The places are transfigured in images, visual and acoustic perceptions, in which the reality of the faces and the bodies running across the wide open spaces transforms into the tragic lyric of an endless war. Joseph, a man condemned to live waiting for the second coming, is the mythical narrator of history, and an emblem of a world in despair that keeps on dying and resurrecting from the nightmare of war: “The Eternals tries to deal not with the immediate physical and material consequences of war and loss, but with the long-term effects on the minds of entire generations” (L. Barisone).
Local Time
- Timezone: America/Los_Angeles
- Date: 09 Nov 2022
- Time: 13:30
Location
- Spazio Alfieri - Via dell'Ulivo, 8, 50122 Florence
Organizer
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Pierre-Yves Vandeweerd
Pierre-Yves Vandeweerd is a Belgian filmmaker. After graduating in Anthropology and African Civilisations, Vandeweerd has been professor in several European universities, including the Université Libre in Bruxelles, the Haute Ecole d’Arts et de design (Head) de Genève, the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences sociales (EHESS) in Paris. Since 2011, he has been working as a programmer for the festival Les États Généraux du documentaire in Lussas. Mostly shot on 16 and super 8 mm film, his films bring together, through a poetic cinematographic gesture, forgotten wars and destinies, lost territories, incursions to the borders of reality and reason. His films have been shot in Mauritania (Nemadis, Years Without News [2001], Faraway Roots [2002], Drowned by Oblivion [2007]), in the Western Sahara(The Dormants [2008], Lost Land [2011]), in Sudan (Closed district [2004]), in France on the Mont Lozère (For The Lost [2014]). His last two films, The Eternals (2017) and Inner Lines (2022) were shot in Armenia, Nagorno-Karabakh and Turkey. Inner Lines (2022), was selected for the International Competition of Visions du Réel 2022.
