©Younès Ben Slimane
By Amel Bouslama
“We knew they were beautiful, the islands”, production Le Fresnoy-Studio national des arts contemporains-Inside Productions, with the support of the French Institute of Tunisia. This hybrid film mixing documentary and fiction, lasting 20 minutes, is the second beautiful and excellent film by the young Tunisian director, visual artist and architect, Younès Ben Slimane, presented, screened and debated on October 10, 2022 at the auditorium of the French Institute of Tunisia, within the framework of Jaou 2022. As a reminder, the first cinematographic work produced by Younès Ben Slimane obtained the Golden Tanit for the short documentary film at the 30e edition of the Carthage Cinematographic Days 2019.
A tragic end could reach, as it could spare, those who leave their country located on the African continent. He thus faces the trials, emerges unscathed or dies at sea! So, does he cross the night of the Mediterranean Sea to find hope and work in a foreign country, on the other side? Is he really aware of this camouflaged suicide? The waves can wash his corpse onto the beach, like this appalling image that circulated in 2020 on social networks of the Kurdish-Syrian child lying on his stomach by the sea!
With discretion and great subtlety, Younès Ben Slimane’s video camera films the grave of a stranger found dead on the beach in Zarzis, a town in southwestern Tunisia. This tomb is in the form of a light mound of earth, a compact and flattened mass of golden sand, illuminated by a halo of light. The focus is on the value of human life. The filmmaker says that his work is “a return to basics, to elementary gestures”.
As a poet of the image, Younès Ben Slimane never ceases to surprise us with his minimalist approach and his refined vision of the things and scenes he shoots. Make a movie, without dialogue, without commentary and without embellishment. This approach — which has become our director’s trademark — allows the viewer to focus their reading on the essential, on the sounds of the elements, those of water, air, earth and fire. Moreover, the title of the film is a line of poetry taken from a poem by the illustrious Greek poet Georges Séféris. We think that this homage paid to the material, by the sobriety of the shot image, which drags on over long sequences. Younès Ben Slimane majestically succeeds in moving us thanks to this game undertaken with shadow, here nocturnal darkness, which has itself become a material in its own right. Although it deals with a human tragedy, the author makes us touch the quintessence of life, by stirring deep in our subconscious the archetypal, the secret of the elementary and the living. What a relevant and judicious paradox to deal with an issue categorized under the banner of collective suicide, and to succeed in carrying it out with images and sounds on living matter that aims for life!
A joy to live through this film, a moment of grace through a cozy atmosphere made of rituals lived with simplicity. This blessing generously granted to the soul of the unknown deceased makes the spectators feel that we are a feeling of consideration, respect and dignity towards all human souls whatever their race, identity, social class and origin.
The slow pace of the film makes us savor and subtly feel the passage from night to day. A walk offered as an initiatory gesture for the aesthetic pleasure that reaches the spiritual. Younès Ben Slimane eliminates everything that risks overloading his character, to keep, for example, only his hands which perform the essentials of the ritual in contact with the four elements, or examine the objects and personal effects found with the remains of the drowned.
Moreover, the director lingers to film the flame and its crackling, its moving shapes, nothing more, nothing less. He makes us live the action in its nudity, the heat released by the flames, their dance and the nuances of their color. This economy in the means implemented requires stopping on a plan devoid of any words. Only the musicality of the sound produced by the material is present, the lapping of the water projected on the ground forming the grave of the drowned dead.
In the last shot, Younès Ben Slimane’s camera establishes a clear paradox between the nature of death as a raw, sure and irrefutable truth, and that of the life of a troglodyte. This one leads a life, admittedly standing, but standing on the edge of an abyss. This plan of an unstable balance is a metaphor, it sums up all the risk incurred by those who venture to travel aboard a small boat from North Africa towards the southern shore of Europe.
What expressive gap does the troglodyte house present: a dark void, on one side, and a luminous void, on the other? A void opening onto the void despite the elegant curve that draws their edge!
Like a tightrope walker, the character, who we see standing on the edge of the dividing line with the sky, risks losing his balance and falling into the void at any time! So it is with the curve of the life of clandestine migrants, on the tangent, on the border between darkness and light, the abyss and the sky.
A film with a strong aesthetic dose that depicts a solemn atmosphere where the treatment of night and shadow and consequently light takes on the same importance as other materials. A large-scale video work that takes us back to the dawn of time. It makes us plunge as in a prayer into a state of meditation on what affects the dignity of the human soul in contact with life. After Copenhagen and Tunis, the film “We knew that the islands were beautiful” by Younès Ben Slimane will travel to Barcelona in November to participate in Loop Fair 2022. This video art fair is the most popular of Europe and attracts the greatest collectors in this discipline. We wish him all the success and luck he deserves.
AB