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Editorials

Paul Néaoutyine
Président de la Province Nord

Adocumentary film festival is a foray into the turmoil of our world. The Ânûû-rû âboro (’The Man’s Shadow’ in Païci) festival, takes the world’s pulse as a doctor would. Through the selected films flow the powerful tidal surges shaping today’s world. One thing is clear : we are experiencing a century of massive displacement. Every day, pressured by grinding poverty, thousands of Africans risk their very lives to head for the European Eldorado, often under the illusion that jobs and better lives await them there. The paradox is that Africa, a continent of fabulous wealth, is being looted by the multinationals and cannot even feed its own children. Flee or die, that is sometimes the only choice left. The same events have occurred in Asia, in South America and in the Middle East as well as in the republics of the former Soviet Union : emigration is the only option. Consequently, on the city fringes, legions of illegal underpaid immigrant workers with no rights are exploited and live in sub-standard accommodation. Their daily existence contrasts the desire to earn their pittance and fear of the police. This world, governed today by unequal exchanges between rich and under-developed countries, is not unchangeable. It is striking to see how people keep their self-respect even in the face of so much suffering. The 2009 festival programme is an invitation to share among communities : our country’s citizens of French, Chinese, Vietnamese, Indonesian or Guadeloupian origin will be able to watch films about their original countries and cultures. The Ânûû-rû âboro festival will also screen some films produced in 2009 by young Kanaks, films which question our common history. To be free, Countries have to produce their own images of themselves, their own films, their own identity. Ânûû-rû âboro is a beginning.

Jean-Louis Comolli
Président du festival

This is only the third Anûû-rû âboro festival but clearly the documentary film genre it represents has already left a deep imprint on New Caledonia. What makes documentaries compelling (and fairly universally successful) ? They focus on ’real people’ (not actors), in their ’real lives’ (not on sets) and ’real activities’ (fishers fishing, farmers tending their fields, workers on the building site, etc.). Life as truly lived is the subject. We are not told stories, we are given the facts. The issue of truth is raised. This is also what journalism (print media and television) is interested in. Documentary films often cover the same topics and show the same world as television current affairs or news features. And claim to show the same truths. The similarity stops there. And that is also where the gulf opens between the two approaches. The journalist’s approach never leaves us any freedom to give our own meaning to what is seen and heard. The journalist acts as a guide for the blind and deaf, describing what we see as if we were incapable of understanding it otherwise. Like a big brother who holds our hand because he has no confidence in us. Television journalism treats us like children ; documentary film sees us as responsible men and women, interested in other people and other ways of living and thinking, if we are left free to judge in our own way, with our own ideas, whatever they may be. Documentary film addresses specific audiences and talks to them of singular people and situations. Each person is unique and documentary film endeavours to reveal everyone’s special individuality, so precious in an era when capital treats humans as commodities and jettisons them like rubbish. Unfortunately, television journalism is in step with the social norm. It is obsessed by the calculation of consequences as if it were an organ of political power – and maybe in fact it is. Documentaries and current affairs programmes are alike but different. Documentary film embodies the freedom of the viewer. Television current affairs programmes wants control. The choice between the two is a preference for one kind of society over another.

Samuel Goromido,
Président de l’association ânûû-rû âboro,

From the Iraq war live worldwide on television to ’reality’ TV shows, our taste for ’real-life events’ seems to be growing all the time. But what kind of reality are we looking for ? Does filming reality mean locking some young people up together in competition or casting them away on a ’desert’ island under permanent video or microphone surveillance ? That ’reality’, as we know, is no more than a carefully staged piece of theatre resulting from a casting process in which each actor plays a role pre-assigned by the all-powerful production company with a script and rules laid down in advance. Such shams, travesties of reality, with no other purpose than to raise audiences and profits, are the antithesis of the documentary. But neither is the documentary genre a bird’s eye view of the earth, full of postcard images of a glorified nature in which people and their suffering, their struggles, their follies, their mistakes their victories and their defeats are conspicuous by their absence, Luckily the documentary film genre is spared by these stilted clichés ; without being detached, it is connected to the world’s commotion as seen from the grassroots level, in the street, in the hurly-burly. The men and women who appear in documentary films may be players in one sense of the word, but they are not professional actors or the consenting subjects of a standardised production. They are free to relate the world as they really see it. Documentary film shows life and stimulates imaginations. It is an invitation and a recreation and questions reality in all its complexity. It is a wager on intelligence.

Tapo gé go paa Irak â pitiri göröpu ânâ i ânûrû âboro ânâ é nyê të géré pi paari tâjè i âju pârâ go paï tâ wè jèkutâ gojè nani göröpu . É nyê të géré pi mâinâ to. Ânâ dëpërë ânûrû âboro go ? Përë tèpa aboro èpo mâ èpo ilèri nâ rè wakè go ânâ rè tâ nâ pi tûwâ kë pwi production nâ i pwârâ numê go ânâ mwâni . É po dau wâ iti jii âju pârâ go ê âju ânûrû âboro pwi nâ jèè inâ go pâ popaï mâ jèkutâ go ba goro âboro nâ rè wâro wâni göröpu â go inâ pâ i ânûrû âboro kâjè ânâ é töpwö côwâ âju popai go mâ pi pa nîmîrî tâjè diri ba goro âboro wânî kanaky pâ nâigé nâ jè popa gééca ânâ wèéni âju pârâ go mâ pi cèikî go nâ go pâ töötu nâ ba göiri dööbë awé.