
Characters cut from a frame, from behind, blurred, almost unidentifiable, lie in the waste and ephemeral scenery, their colors melting in this unusual territory of a building site, a life is created in a dark basement and a ground floor adorned with wheelbarrows, sand, sweat,…
A life apart, a refuge, a forced asylum perhaps, out of a need for work but, maliciously appreciated by these protagonists, a bond is born between them, they cloister themselves in their world, a world where a street separates them and us from the rest who rub shoulders with this « chic » district of a seaside town in Tunisia.
Work, but also waiting, waiting for water to heat up, waiting to kill time, waiting to finish the job and waiting until the next territory, perhaps with other people, but people who are definitely alike.
I step over the flagstones that separate the two worlds, access is easy, we enter without any apparent resistance, we settle down (me and my camera) among them, we film.
The camera records everything objectively, or almost, to emphasize the shield that surrounds them. A place full of everything and nothing shelters them, virtual landmarks condition them, imperceptible walls organize this life in community, « rooms », « a kitchen », « a shower », that’s how they designate them; then my camera struggles to see these phantom walls and the separations between these different places of imaginary life.
My camera and I fade into this perimeter, this mass of people, and they open up to us the moment of a shower, of a lunch; the image is sharper, the frame is wider, the contrast is more accentuated, the color is searing.
Are they playing with my claire/obscure, with my flou/net; or am I playing with them, with their everyday life, so common and so unprecedented at the same time, exhibiting them at times and inhibiting them at others?
the editing of the sequences is crude (with no fading effects, apart from one scene at the beginning and another at the end), in order to preserve the harshness of the filmed subjects’ environment and to cut out this little piece of reality and transpose it onto the camera’s tapes without artifice or exaggeration, the sequences and shots are handled with care and delicacy like a surgeon, to avoid altering a memory, the memory of these workers, which generally fades into oblivion, the memory of people who don’t really seek to bear witness or endure in time, just the time of a furtive exchange, of little importance but with a great deal of truth and depth.