THE OPINION OF THE “WORLD” – NOT TO BE MISSED
Boris Svartzman, the author of this remarkable documentary, is a French photographer, sociologist and Sinophile who has frequented China for twenty years. Enough to have forged bonds of great trust with the inhabitants of the river island of Guanzhou, near Canton, objects of a hidden and nonetheless brutal expropriation by the authorities since 2008, who want to set up an ecological park there. tourist vocation. For now, we have provided for tourism by building a luxury hotel. As for ecology, we wait to see the color.
In any case, this situation results in an open war which has lasted for fifteen years, which is presumed to be lost in advance given the state of the forces present, between an omnipotent autocratic State which destroys the democratic ferments of Chinese society through its rural collectivism and the aforementioned peasants who – by virtue of a mixture of scorned dignity, attachment to their traditional universe and economic ruin – cling with remarkable courage and stubbornness to their plots of land.
Without doubt, this question of the brutal eradication of the old world and the old habitat by Chinese state neo-liberalism is not new and is already nourishing what is being done most fascinating in Chinese cinema itself. even, from the fictional work of Jia Zhang-ke to the documentary epic of Wang Bing. However, like the excellent South Water North Move (2014), by Antoine Boutet, foreign documentary filmmakers, and more particularly French, confront each other, without dishonor, on the subject.
Concrete barbarism
What we like, in this regard, in Boris Svartzman’s film, lies in its very compact workmanship (less than an hour and a half), its photographic sense of composition, its friendly presence outside the frame (we recognize it , he is called out, he replies), and above all to his percussion, so bitterly free is the word. The documentary is thus made that a good subject taken from life, a relation of confidence conquered over time and a sense of filming almost always win the case.
So this is what happens here, with this series of astounding testimonies, most often gathered outside, it seems in the beginning, between two often derisory activities of maintaining crops reduced to nothing. This feeling is plastically exacerbated by the general plans which show the extent of the relocation bars whose gigantic shadow threatens the four cubits of land of the local Asterix.
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