stills from video
Le feu tue les yeux de la nuit [Fire kills the eyes of the night], 2020
20:52min
two-channel video
Le feu tue les yeux de la nuit [Fire kills the eyes of the night] is a video installation based on the scenario of a never produced feature film, where the human gaze is decentered and the island becomes the narrator of the story.
“A man who cannot bring himself to sacrifice his daughter to the gods decides to build them a sanctuary so they would stop wandering the plains and rest there as in ancient times.”
A father, his daughter and a stranger are trying to deal with repressed feelings they have for each other and at the same time, trying to please the gods to save their land.
This original script was written by my father before I was born. This was his one and only attempt to make a film and it never got produced. Years later while visiting my family house, I found the forgotten storyboard. I was intrigued by the relationships between all three human protagonists and the landscape, and struck by the exoticism related to it. The original story was set on the Easter Island but was planned to be shot in France, in similar looking landscapes. I cast my dad and friends to play the main roles, and filmed the landscape of South of France, where I grew up. In the places filled with the magic of my childhood memories and land of fantasy for beach mass tourism.