Vidéaste, plasticist, LebaneseAli Cherri add the string of the realization to its bow withThe Dam. A dense and enchanting film, at a thousand leagues of cinema conventions that make many recent productions pataude. An excellent surprise to (re)discover for its output in physical format.
Worker by day, artist by night
Working in a Sudanese brick factory dumped on the outskirts of the Merowe dam, Maher takes a double life. That of this underpaid slave, curving his back to the stubborn work that awaits him and hearing only by far the rabid social grunt in his country, carried to him by radio waves. But also that of a secret man, sinking into the desert every night to build a mysterious mud building...
The Damopens like a documentary. The plans are fixed, long, attached to convey the gestures of these sharp bees the clay, with hands sculpting it, intriguing in moulds until obtaining the much desired briquettes, finally dried and cooked. Then these documentary oripeaus will, under the impulse of a lateral transelling decoupling the camera from its motionless position, create a breach necessary to instigate a purely fictional vein.
Since the spectator gains to remain blank in the face of the amazing incursions into the fantastic feature film, we will limit in one last part to « spoilers » the possible interpretations that it is possible to affix to this singular work. Let's keep in mind, however, that she is registering for Ali Cherri in a trilogy. « telluric » composed of two other short films (or installations of art, it is up to you to see),The DisquietandThe Digger(The Creuseur).
The Mystery of the Dam
Before going to the part reserved for readers who have already seen the feature film, let us add thatThe Damcan see itself as a true film with a poetic and political enigma that is simply hallucinating by the biases that he imposes: a main character almost entirely mutic, a total mixture of genres, a pure will to escape narrative constraints to the point of becoming perfectly a-narrative (which gives regular nuggets, including the best film of the past year)Pacification, let's call him back !). To link it to newer, more mainstream films, may we bring togetherThe Damof theLost Highway(andDavid Lynchin general) orEnemy of Villeneuve.
From Dam to Open Water
PLet's go to the game with « spoilers », where we will briefly try to explore the possible readings of this film by Ali Cherri. The mutic Maher lives as a slave, paid by an omnipresent boss, appearing on the site as quickly as he disappears. If social anger does come to her, it remains distant, almost impalpable. Some tags emerge from here, from there, criticizing the regime. Radio reports news from the largest cities. More.
At night, Maher escapes, he will build an enigmatic mud Golem. He exhausts himself at this strange bicephaly between harassing but rewarding work, and the creative or even spiritual impulses that enliven to mount this mystic being of mud. The staging highlights this fatigue by the multiplication of night scenes, where Maher and his « implementation » Only through evanescent silhouettes or moving shadows can be seen on the screen.
Exhaustion, frailty, wounding... A mysterious wound opens up behind his back, tenacious, incurable. His flesh is infecting. Poisoning from inside. Until the camera caught him almost dead, his arms still, covered with ants, the skin sprinkled with an alabaster drawing him a body appearance. Like so many others – at several moments in the film we evoke the bodies carried by the waters of the Nile – he kills himself at the task, lets himself be crushed by the machine. A warning uttered by the golem's guttural voice takes shape: it will not reach the end like this. The proof? The rain washes its work. His hours of building this mud being destroyed in a storm.
Only the solution of a second birth remains for him, while he sinks naked into the Nile. The healing is there, between the reeds, in the free waves, far beyond the Dam...
Ode to the emancipation of countries and peoples, nations and individuals,The Dama complex work, sometimes rough and rough, but exciting visually and by what it narrates of an Africa in the midst of reinvention. A singular film that is now possible to (re)discover in physical format (and for some lucky ones, still in theaters)!
Data sheet
DVD Zone B (France)
Publisher: Blaq Out
Duration: 80 min
Release Date: August 22, 2023
Video format: 576p/25 - 2.39
Soundtrack: Sudanese Dolby Digital 5.1 (and 2.0)
SubtitlesFrench
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