A Film Far Beyond A God
Waël Noureddine
2008 - 40 min - 35 mm/16 mm - Couleur - France

"Waël Noureddine’s first films left no room for doubt; for him the cinema is not merely a collection of images. Its mission is rather to root out and capture the most intense, far-reaching experiences and show them on film. These are physical feats, representing “interior experience” as Bataille would say. More visionary than just images, his relationship to cinema is mystical. And these are, in actual fact, possible religions and archaic beliefs, the title points to the after-life, which his latest film endeavours to bring to life. Leaving Lebanon, where his other films were shot, for the Yemen, he warns us that this represents a return to the origins of polytheism, before the establishment of Islam. A return to the ancient Arab divinities worshipped long, long ago, to whom the film offers a generous sacrifice, uninterrupted by the shots, cuts or overexposure, by faces or views of the desert. The ancient is always there,in fits and starts, it is enough to look out for the epiphanies and assemble them, in order that they merge with the gods of today: Jim Morrison, Che Guevara, Jean-Luc Godard, etc... a contemporary litany recited off by F.J. Ossang’s voice. A Rimbaudian project, we would have understood it, through a secularism acquired beyond the denial of faith, a thirst never quenched of secular awe."
Jean-Pierre Rehm -FID Marseille 2008