First the title, Self Portrait, on black background. Then the sound of a wintry wind. And then the burst of images: cable car cables above a misty forest, a snow-capped mountain peak, a truck stopped in an icy desert, powder snow on a parking lot, plains and other white mountains, a snow cannon to add more, and then finally some muffled humans.
It is in a winter on this Earth that the new film by Canadian filmmaker Joële Walinga begins. All these images and those that follow for more than an hour come from surveillance cameras installed in the four corners of the vast world, without too much geographical precision. The whole composes a strangely poetic portrait of what being here, now, means.
“For me, this film presents beautiful images reminding us of how strange animals we are. I can see it as a way of illustrating capitalism, the protection of property. Others will rely on the widespread surveillance shown by these cameras, which I also understand. Still others retain snapshots of moments of vulnerability,” says Ms.me Walinga, joined by The duty midweek in Portugal, where she lives part of the year.
She must attend the screening of her film on Friday in the metropolis as part of the International Documentary Meetings of Montreal (RIDM). “Truly, I don’t expect everyone to share my vision of things and agree with me,” she continues. I am also very excited by the different ways of receiving the film. The title reflects this dual function: it is a self-portrait of humanity captured accidentally, but also a self-portrait of the viewer, who can project what he hears onto it. »
For me, this film presents beautiful images reminding us of how strange animals we are. I can see it as a way of illustrating capitalism, the protection of property.
An open work, then. The filmmaker began five years ago to collect images reproduced online by surveillance cameras. Only one of the sites consulted relays the images of 9000 lenses. The curious, fascinated, drew a finely sorted video library, about 1500 tapes in total, some of them several hours long.
“It was a little obsessive,” she says, admitting to being a little violent not to start collecting again. The idea of using them for a collage came to him a little over a year ago. “I understood that my collection could be used to paint a portrait of ourselves. »
Anthropological approach
The panorama reproduces 166 extracts. “I think I was drawn to a mix of framing, colors and lighting,” says Ms.me Walinga, who rode herself Self Portrait. I was also guided by a somewhat abstract, anthropological idea that focuses on the way humans inhabit and shape territories, landscapes. »
The proposal piles up the layers of meaning and interpretations. The raw material shows places considered precious or sensitive that their owner or caretaker decides to film for protection.
The anthology introduces a new selection that the editing reorganizes by imagining a year of four seasons made up in fact of images gleaned over several years.
The result, hypnotic, poetic, is frankly more of an art film and would perhaps have more place at FIFA (the International Festival of Films on Art, not the world soccer organization), in a museum or in a gallery. “The difference comes from the viewer’s experience,” says Joële Walinga. In an art gallery, the visitor watches for maybe five minutes and changes rooms. In the cinema, the spectator watches the film from beginning to end to understand the rhythm established by the editing of the images, but also of the sound. »
The film Self Portrait is presented at the Cinéma du Parc on November 18 at 8:30 p.m. and at the Cinémathèque on November 20 at 3:30 p.m., as part of the Montreal International Documentary Meetings.