Marie-Clémence Andriamonta-Paës: Fahavalo/ 2
Enfin, someone wrote on FB, when it was announced that the film «Fahavalo» by French company Laterit had been chosen for a festival, the World Film Festival/Festival des Films du Monde in Montréal, a festival for fiction, shorts and documentaries, link below. World premiere September 1st.
I echo the “enfin” about the film and take some quote from the review I wrote months ago, The whole review is here:
http://www.filmkommentaren.dk/blog/blogpost/4187/
”I’ll try to tell you the story”, says the weak old man in a blue shirt with a hat
on his head. He is adressing the camera crew. ”I was 22 in 1947”, the year that is the focus of the film, the year when a rebellion took place led by the ”Fahavalo”, the enemies it means, against the French who had colonised Madagascar. An uprising against the Vazaha, the French, the Europeans. He was one of the freedom fighters and he paid his price, 8 years and 9 months in prison. The rebels were hiding in the forests and long after they were defeated, many of them were still there.
That old man is just one of the storytellers in the film. A handful of other men and women still alive are the witnesses found and involved in the film by the filmmakers. In conversations, which are conversations and not interviews – and conversations that most of the time include listeners, relatives, children and grandchildren, who want to hear and – you sense that – are proud of what they did back then…
On the photo above you see cameraman César Paes, assistant director and set photographer Tiago Paes, Berthe Raharisoa, in her white dress, a lively lady, born in 1925, who was part of the MDRM. In the film she sings the anthem of the resistance party. Lovely!
And to the right director and producer Marie Clémence Andriamonta Paes, as the name indicates she is half Malagasy, half French. It is of course a huge advantage that she speaks the language and can communicate directky with the witnesses.
All I know about Madagascar, I know from Marie-Clémence and César Paes and their films.
http://www.ffm-montreal.org/en/press-releases/195–ffm2018-documentaries-of-the-world.html
