My Seven Magical Places
Épisode 4 Série-Collection : Babel

Boris Lehman
2013 - 323 min - 16 mm - Couleur - Belgique

The fourth part, covering a 10-year period, of Boris Lehman’s diary, Babel, started in 1983. "My life has become the film script, which itself has become my life".
"My Seven Magical Places" starts at the moment I was evicted from several places, which are dear to me. They served me well as homes, both as places for living and working. This was the start of my urban wandering, which would take me ten years - a journey of 300,000 kilometres - before returning just about to my starting point.
The adventure was both, physical and metaphysical.
Fragments of documentary films, a personal diary, bedside-table notes, pieces of fiction, "My Seven Magical Places" is an essay about passing time, embellished by a jumble of reflections both light and serious; finally, it is an attempt to simply exist.
To look back over all the places of my life, to revisit and film my friends: its a huge project. That is what I have tried to do, and it has taken me more than 10 years (1999-2010).
The film - divided into 10 parts - is presented in the form of a mosaic, little films intertwined with one another, interconnected like in a vast fresco or tapestry. The many chapters allow me to take a certain distance from raw autobiography and from chronology, which would have ended up being boring and irritating.
The film wins out in its philosophical aspect, because for me the film is mainly a reflection on my way of living, more than a simple report of my life.