La peliculle qui a tout changé

In the heart of Central America, in a tiny country called Honduras, an 80-year-old Frenchman has managed to create a film library under a dictatorship. This is the story of a cause, its hero, and the certainty that nothing can erase a memory rebuilt with passion and tenacity. Often, a decision taken at the turning point of a life can trigger the desire to "excavate" our past, to know our origins and thus to go further in our search for identity. The discovery of a roll of film at the bottom of a cellar was the trigger that would create the need beyond any other step. A few years after this simple find, a film library and archive would be created in a country where memory doesn't seem to be a preoccupation. What use is a film archive in a country where the narco-dictatorship distracts the population with soccer, religion and propaganda? What started out as a preoccupation, then a dream, is now a reality. This is what I want to show. The journey of an exceptional man who is committed to the search for a country's audiovisual memory, so that a new generation can learn about its history. Like most Latin American countries, its path to true democracy was traumatized by civil wars in the early 1900s, followed by seven coups d'état since 1930. In 1970, the country experienced armed revolutions, torture, murder and the disappearance of numerous opponents in the 1980s. The country was ravaged by four hurricanes in the 80s, 90s and 2000s. More recently, in 2009, a new coup d'état plunged Honduras into the quagmire of drug trafficking and forced migration. The dictatorship would remain in power from the 2009 coup until November 2021, with the victory of the Socialist Party and the first female president in Honduran history. It was against this backdrop that my father arrived in Honduras in 1973, and found himself at the start of a new life full of adventure in a country that had given him everything, and a man who had given everything to that country. Learning to love cinema in this way means that my father is admirable. It's one of the best times of my life. Sharing his love of cinema created a very strong bond between us, and we became unconditional friends and confidants. After many shoots together, I was able to discover an artist in all his dimension. It's me, his son, now a filmmaker, who wants to tell the story of the birth of his dream. My father overcame difficulties thanks to his love for this country, its people and their stories, making him the guardian of a rediscovered memory. MY FATHER Even if this film is not a portrait of my father, but rather the birth of a film library in a country in crisis, it's important for me to tell you bits and pieces of his life from his youth, so that you can understand his destiny. My father was born in 1940 in Nancy, a year after the outbreak of the Second World War. His father joined the army and was soon captured by the Nazis and sent to prisoner-of-war camps. His mother, a hairdresser, now alone and caring for her two children, marked five difficult years for a family living in the midst of conflict. A few years later, he discovered the magic of images, fascinated by the educational slide projections at elementary school, the dark room and the beams of light that cut through space. It was a real shock for my father, who perhaps already carried within him the incredible sensation of cinema. Long before he discovered television, he would go behind movie theaters to collect bits of film with repeated images. "It took a while, but those first sessions at the village cinema helped him understand the phenomenon of movement on the screen. He was, like many at the time, a "Cinema Paradiso" child. What followed was the making of the famous magic lantern: "A cardboard box. On one side, a hole where two magnifying glasses are placed at a certain distance from each other. An incision in the tube in the middle to slide the piece of film through. The lamp was switched on and the image focused by moving the lantern towards the wall. No fire followed these experiments, and that's another miracle. Throughout his childhood and adolescence, he was involved in theater, dance and pantomime, but much better than all that, he sang, a voice that made a lasting impression. His favorite singer was Luis Mariano. And so it began, a passion that would never abandon him. At the age of 18, he decided to follow in his mother's footsteps and became a hairdresser - yes, before he became a filmmaker, my father was a hairdresser. Cinema was more of a pleasure, a passion. A few months later, he would be called up for military service at the end of the Algerian War. Always with his little Pathé Webo 9.5mm at his side, he managed to film several images of his stay in Algeria: "For me, this encounter with Algeria was the beginning of what would be my life as a filmmaker, and I never parted with my camera again". In the 1960s, Bride and his wife decided to move to Canada with their young daughter Corinne, to work in a ladies' hairdressing salon with Quebec friends. A few years later, the relationship with his first wife didn't work out so well, and the salon where he worked caught fire. My father thought at the time that he had to find a way to get on with his life and make a radical change, "I absolutely didn't want to continue being a hairdresser". Thinking about what he could do now, he remembered that one of his customers had told him about her son's experiences as a volunteer in Central America. So he decided to contact this lady and get in touch with her son to join this team of Canadian volunteers. Shortly afterwards, my father would find himself in Honduras in the early 1970s, still with his camera in hand. "Those who dare to visit Honduras can easily fall in love with its history, culture, people, beaches, mountains and rivers. Since arriving in the country in 1973, my father has become a self-taught filmmaker, filming hundreds of local development projects throughout Honduras for NGOs and public and private companies. He was a war cameraman in El Salvador and Nicaragua during the Central American revolutions. He has made several auteur documentaries with the country's various native and Afro-descendant peoples. His best-known films are "Maiz, Copal y Candela" and "Hasta que el teatro nos hizo ver". He found a new love, my mother, and with her they had a daughter and a son. He sang 2 operas, "L'elisir d'amore" and "Don Pasquale", and gave many concerts for friends, family and people he met on his documentary tours. Throughout his career, he always kept copies of all these films, even the rushes, and that's how he ended up with a collection of over 400 documentaries. I remember it was always a problem trying to find a place for these tapes, but throwing them away or reusing them was out of the question. "You can tell a good part of the history of Honduras with all this," my father used to say to me, and I, in my young naivety, told him that these tapes were taking up too much space in his office. Nowadays, the value of this collection is priceless; it's part of the country's audiovisual heritage. Now, I recognize the value of everything my father told me, and I join him and his team in building the audiovisual memory of Honduras. As if that weren't enough, at the age of 77, he succeeded in creating a film library for the people of Honduras and an audiovisual memory network for Central America. THE HONDURAS CINEMATHEQUE "A simple event at the most unexpected moment is enough for a glance at something unusual to provoke a reaction that, years later, would have a result no one could have imagined." It was in 2006 that this event struck him like an arrow to the heart. At the bottom of a dark, moldy cellar, my father discovered several rolls of 35mm film shot in Honduras on the dictator Tiburcio Carias Andino in the 1950s. It was film that changed everything. "What filmmaker wouldn't have been intrigued by this discovery? Now my father was asking himself several questions: "What should we do with this? How do we know they're really in good condition? How do we save them, digitize them, who, what, where?" Of course, my father had always been interested in the country's memory, but the idea of a film library had never crossed his mind. After several months of discussions with people around him, the idea of a cinematheque seemed to be the best solution. Well, now it has to be done by a Honduran," I said to myself, "and I'll accompany them through the whole process," an apocalyptic silence. I remember very well that one of my colleagues, who was always kind to Dad but a bit rude in his way of speaking, said to him - you have to dream big to give life to a project like that in this shitty country - Dad, always serene, didn't say anything back. So, over time, I've learned to choose my words carefully when I'm around my father. In 2007, a first attempt to create a film library seemed to be going quite well, using my father's personal collection of over 400 cassettes and several thousand meters of film to convince a few colleges and certain political friendships that it was necessary to find a place to safeguard, digitize and disseminate a good part of Honduran history. The collection contains images of Honduras through the ages, dictatorships and their monsters, political speeches and movements, revolutions and coups d'état in Central America, natural disasters, artists' testimonies and interviews, religious processions, video experiments on the country's education and social development, propaganda, fiction films, documentaries on native peoples, places and street corners that no longer exist, and much more. After two years of hard work and good intentions from a Frenchman who still looks a bit like a madman to those who couldn't understand his project. In April 2009, the Cinémathèque took its first steps in a small space at the Bibliothèque Nationale. My father saw his dream become a reality, a joy that would last only a very short time. On June 28, 2009, two months later, a military coup d'état extended his dream, and everything collapsed in the darkness of the ghosts of armed power in a country that had learned nothing from its past. This coup d'état shook an entire country, history repeats itself, nothing changes. A hard blow for the whole family, a film library project on standby and then me, his son, who lost his job as an engineer on one of the social projects linked to the overthrown government. But all was not lost, my father found in me an ally and the opportunity to reconvert to cinema, the dream of every father, a son at his side to gain strength for a second attempt to create this cinematheque. 8 years passed quickly and the dictatorship was still with us, but it was in this space of time that my father was able to build a single force with his family and closest friends, ready to do anything to defend the cause. I remember my father's words very well: "Son, I'm not getting any younger, I'm almost 77", and that's when he realized that he had to find a space for the cinematheque near the dictatorship, a difficult but not impossible challenge. Getting the film library project off the ground was a long and painful process, as creating a film archive is no easy task in a country where memory, with a few rare exceptions, is far from a tradition. We had to start somewhere, knowing that television channels and independent filmmakers were spending their time erasing what they filmed, due to the lack of digital copying systems and recording equipment, which led producers to reuse cassettes a second and even a third time, resulting in the loss of a large part of Honduras' audiovisual memory. The word "SEARCH" became fundamental. While the cinematheque was taking shape, my father decided to start searching every corner of the country, with the help of television, radio and the press, for any audiovisual material in any format containing images of the country's history. A great success, the message was well conveyed, and many people and various public and private institutions began calling my father to donate hundreds of video cassettes and crates of 8mm and 16mm reels. What I'm telling you is taking place in the midst of a crisis and even a period of total mistrust of the country, as dictatorship took hold and we became a "Narco State", generating doubts about politicians, institutions and sometimes about the good intentions of people like my father, who was trying to create a film library in this context. But sometimes we find answers where we least expect them. Here was a second attempt to find a physical space for a film library that existed more in his dreams and in his office, where the amount of audiovisual material accumulated over 38 years made it impossible to walk. After several attempts to get an appointment with Ms. Julieta Castellanos, Rector of the National Autonomous University of Honduras, my father finally managed, by dint of insistence, to speak with Ms. Julieta. Julieta and after 25 minutes of talking about the importance of a film library for Honduras at the University, he hears the following words - I have a tiny space for you at the CAC arts and culture center, and you can start tomorrow - BOOM, in my father's eyes a joy I hadn't seen in a long time. In 2017, the cinematheque became a reality and found its place as a new direction at the University with a sufficient budget for the years to come, the dream was fulfilled and the work of researching and rescuing audiovisual memory would intensify over the next few years. My father's greatest challenge at the moment is to show that the cinematheque works and that its mission is to preserve and disseminate a country's audiovisual memory, so that the new generations of this country know their history better and can build their future with a better understanding of their past. Little by little, the Cinematheque has found allies in every Central American country and in France to continue researching, safeguarding and digitizing the region's audiovisual heritage. The Honduran Cinematheque thus became the home of Central America's audiovisual memory. HONDURAS AND FRANCE A beautiful friendship is established. Paris 2017 As part of the Semaine de l'Amérique Latine held in Paris every year, the Centre Culturel d'Espagne programs a series of conferences. This year, the focus is on the handicrafts of the Lenca Native People of Honduras, supported by a number of documentaries on the women's pottery work. My father was invited as a documentary filmmaker and took advantage of his presence in the Paris region to visit, after making an appointment with France's Institut National de l'Audiovisuel INA. Mr. Benjamin Lerena, project manager, and his colleagues welcomed him. A few hours' visit to the archive and other laboratories of this institution prompted my father to reflect on the long and enormous task of safeguarding the audiovisual memory of Honduras. During the visit, my father was able to establish a good relationship with Benjamin Lerena, who also speaks perfect Spanish, and suggested a possible visit to Honduras, the purpose of which would be to demonstrate a new experience in saving the memory of images and sound, and to take advantage of the opportunity to give some basic advice. The idea is in the air, and in the months that follow it will very quickly take on the form of real expertise. An anecdote: "As we parted and said our goodbyes, I remember standing alone on the sidewalk opposite, waiting for the bus that would take me to the RER to Paris, the only person who turned around for a final greeting was Benjamin. "Prophetic, because a few months later, once the obstacles of budget and available dates had been overcome, Benjamin arrived in Honduras with the mission of carrying out a peritage of our analog film and video collection, laying the foundations for the preservation and handling of our material, and other advice inherent in the activities to be developed in the case of an initiative like ours, innovative in Honduras and for that very reason full of pitfalls". "Since then, our relationship with our friend Benjamin and his colleagues has grown, and our exchanges have taken on the dimension of a true partnership between the Honduran Cinematheque and the INA. "Today, the "Mutualization of Resources for Cataloguing, Digitization and Dissemination of Film and Audiovisual Memory in Central America" project is the result of all these exchanges, which have taken on a regional dimension and projected our experience onto the world map for the protection and dissemination of audiovisual archives." FATHER AND SON Father and son travel the length and breadth of Honduras, a country that sticks with them as they discover it. The paths they travel with their shoulder cameras bring them into contact with native and mestizo peoples, with their traditions and beliefs, and with the most curious and spectacular places: seas, mountains, tropical forests, biospheres and historic sites studied by scientists from all over the world. The camera never stops recording these discoveries and encounters. In this journey to conquer the image, it's the encounters with film buffs and scholars that have given us a glimpse of forgotten tracks and curiosities in vaults where the smell of film invades the place, the discovery of cinematographic nuggets in 35 and 16 MM formats. After all these discoveries, the cinémathèque, which was just an idea at the outset, is starting to take on the shape of a real concern. We can't wait for tomorrow.