Quebec filmmaker Oana Suteu Khintirian does not make comedy films. Too bad, because she has a great sense of timing.
His documentary Beyond the paper on the transmission of knowledge from yesterday to tomorrow is coming to theaters in Quebec these days, at a time when the impression of experiencing a major new stage in the great digital revolution is growing. The pandemic has massiveized full-time or part-time telework. The Coops de l’information newspapers have just announced the end of their print edition.
Above all, in recent weeks, the launch of chatbots à la ChatGPT has opened up the prospect of a world of automated content creation. These fabulous means are already shaking up the world of education while waiting to throw out hundreds of millions, if not of jobs, at least of automatable tasks.
Should we rejoice at the end of the millennia-old civilization of paper? And what transformations in our relationship to knowledge and memory announce the new dematerialized tools capable of giving instant access to all of humanity’s knowledge? So what does the movie say or mean? Beyond the paper ?
“It’s not a thesis film,” replies the filmmaker, whom she met last week at the NFB offices in downtown Montreal. “It’s a film that opens up discussion on a subject that is difficult to broach because it is extremely broad. I wanted to give tools to those who will accompany me on this immense journey to be able to find answers themselves. […] Basically, I wonder about the passage of memory. I ask what is the impact of these new technologies, which gestures we should keep and which we should let go. »
The documentary takes the form of a cinematographic essay in the sense that the filmmaker speaks of us by speaking to the I. A box containing the archives of the Khintirian family serves as a red thread for the demonstration. The little treasure arrived in Montreal with the Romanian immigrants in the 1990s. The filmmaker is personally involved in the treatment, by involving her sister living in Italy, her filmmaker father and her librarian mother, who we discover in an archive after the fire that ravaged the central library of Bucharest during the Romanian revolution of 1989. A touching scene shows his son deciphering with a little difficulty the handwriting of his ancestors dating back a century.
Mauritania, California
The quest around the memory of humanity crosses continents and centuries at a fast pace. The adventure lingers on the manuscripts of Mauritania. The crossroads of the old trans-Saharan roads has made it possible to accumulate countless books in the process of being digitized. This transfer is done at the same time as the learning of calligraphy for young people who, themselves, will be able to read the traces of the elders.
The journey also opens onto global archiving. In California, the Internet Archive project has begun digitizing all books of all time. In Argentina, the widow of Jorge Luis Borges helps to recall the idea of the Library of Babel, containing all the books.
The whole can leave an impression of nostalgia, even of fear, compared to what will soon disappear. The filmmaker disagrees. She repeats that she especially wants to understand what world her child is facing and how she herself has to adapt. “I wonder what I can do so that my values can be transmitted and still have meaning in a completely new digital context. It’s not nostalgia. »
It’s a film that opens up discussion on a subject that is difficult to broach because it is extremely broad.
She adds that you don’t activate the same parts of the brain when reading on screen and on paper. She quotes a Muslim scholar, present in her film, who is sorry for the disappearance of the rote with the information at the end of the click because this transfer would have an impact on the ability to exercise critical thinking. After the interview, in the lobby of the large NFB building, the documentary filmmaker cites the example of this school attended by the children of Silicon Valley bosses where learning is done without digital tools.
Oana Suteu Khintirian is pursuing doctoral studies, where she is interested in movement in the plant world. We already owe him a few films on dance and media collaborations on stage. “How does it all fit together? she asks about herself. All these facets make who I am, quite simply. But, if a link has to be found, I would say that, in Beyond the paper, through dance or with my university studies, I am interested in the deep movements that take place in the collective imagination. The film on paper, I see it as an exploration of the movements of faults, of the continents which slide and form mountains on which I climb to observe what is happening. »
The documentary premiered in competition at the International Festival of Films on Art last month in Montreal. “I really think it deserves to be seen in theaters, says its author. We mixed it in Atmos, a system that allows you to be immersed in the atmospheres. As we travel from the desert to the very center of Buenos Aires, it’s better to be seen on the big screen, with good sound. »