“In the last days to Shibati “, French documentary by Hendrick Dusollier. METEOR MOVIES

In the chinese city of Chongqing is situated in the very poor neighborhood of Shibati. It is here that the documentary French Hendrick Dusollier puts his camera, or rather creeps, camera in hand, in the narrow winding streets and dilapidated. As the later said his interpreter, “he is interested in everything that is going to disappear” : because the area is about to be destroyed, and its inhabitants relocated.

What the price of the Last days Shibati, multi-award winning in many international festivals, it is as Dusollier does not give itself any air of documentary filmmaker French came to film the misery at the other end of the world. Its feature is such that it escapes all the pitfalls that could undermine such a project, starting with a position of overhang.

“subjects” look at the our filmer

To escape, Dusollier first made the choice to land in China without an interpreter and, clearly, without understanding a word of what he says. The last inhabitants of the district mock fondly of him – “If he comes here, is that it must be a lost in his / her country” – ask themselves what is the benefit of coming to film here and worry finally whether he has eaten. Of jokes and touches that make it immediately get out of the role of the documentary filmmaker all-powerful.

These addresses to the one who films remind us of this obvious fact too often absent from many of the documentaries : the “subjects” have to look and think also our filmer. If one were to compare the methodology documentary Dusollier, it would evoke the comings and goings of a dog : mutique, wandering in the streets, attracting the attention and affection of the inhabitants, focusing on a character that it ends up not to leave, disappearing to return a few months after.

An imaginary country,

Away to hide behind his camera to become a pure eye ethnological, Dusollier prefers to count with his body, to be guided by the inhabitants, a child, an old lady who built the “house of thoughts” in the piling up of the objects found in the trash of the neighborhood. Characters who, far from complaining about living in such conditions, the regret of having to go to live in modern apartments.

In this sense, Latter-day Shibati not captured in tragic poverty, but gives the impression of having found, in a large urban city, a secret passage which opens on an imaginary country, soon doomed to destruction.

French Documentary of Hendrick Dusollier (59 minutes). On the Web : www.meteore-films.fr/distribution-films/Shibati