Retour
Rachel Benitah
2006 - 35 min - Digital vidéo - Couleur - France
It is well known that the German philosopher Walter Benjamin, fearing he would not be able to cross the Franco-Spanish border, killed himself in September 1940 in the small village of
Port-Bou. It is also well known that the philosopher wrote about what we call a gesture, and the link it has with History. Dancer and choreographer Rachel Benitah has chosen in her own way, as a woman, as a dancer, as a choreographer, to pay homage to this reflection and to this episode by filming her visit to the area. At the hotel where Benjamin stayed, by the sea in the
Karavan monument honouring the thinker, in the landscapes perhaps travelled or contemplated by him, Rachel Benitah creates a silent language for the camera. The sentences that this language conveys are for everyone to interpret in their own way. A body decides to become a document here, to combine homage with evocation and thought with anger. To blend silence with thinking, and dance with History. (JPR)