I decided to do a report on this theme a certain night of 2013. I thought of my father, remembering our conversations where he spoke of his childhood and the beginning of his adult life in Algeria, all peppered with anecdotes giving all together a picturesque tone and completely erasing the dramatic aspect of an era that had yet, too, been.
In 2006, after a meal, the day before my return home, where he had amazed us by his storytelling skills, I agreed with him to interview him during my next visit. This project disappeared into nothingness with him in the weeks that followed, leaving me helpless and inhabited by the acute sense of the irreversibility of things, the urgency of witnessing and witnessing the fundamental experiences of our individual history. as collective.
This drama, which we all come across one day, was founder, and changed my outlook on the world. I wanted, I had to transmit, for myself, for him, for my son, and beyond, for the whole. To create a bond in these times when so many are broken, leaving us alone, lost, whereas there is so much before and that we work mainly so that there is so much after. To reconnect individual and collective filiation, to give full meaning to the present, and to launch ourselves more wisely towards the future. And so, do not take for granted the essential battles of our elders, won at the cost of their lives in a real and / or symbolic way, which would be at this time in our history, an unconsciousness fraught with consequences.
I approached each of the people who testified in the same way, and of course each meeting was unique; it's an intimate film every time, everyone has his own, with his own emotions and painful residues impossible to share but they have courageously tried to express despite everything. I did not intervene very much, leaving them unfolding their memories, freed by the absence of emotional connection between us allowing them to speak without fear of shocking.
At the twilight of their lives, this opportunity was to leave a trace of this History that long after their return they were told to shut up.
This was for me the occasion of deep and disturbing reflections, of upsetting and magnificent encounters.
From this successful work today, I am left with the imprint of a human adventure in what it can offer most wonderful, and a deep gratitude, born of the conviction of having had a rare privilege.
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