1 00:00:41,374 --> 00:00:43,569 <i>The first image he told me about</i> 2 00:00:43,777 --> 00:00:47,508 <i>was of three children</i> <i>on a road in Iceland in 1965.</i> 3 00:00:54,988 --> 00:00:57,218 <i>He said for him</i> <i>it was the image of happiness,</i> 4 00:00:57,424 --> 00:01:00,416 <i>and that he'd often tried</i> <i>to link it to other images,</i> 5 00:01:00,627 --> 00:01:03,152 <i>but it had never worked.</i> 6 00:01:03,363 --> 00:01:07,265 <i>He wrote me, "I'll have to put it</i> <i>all alone at the beginning of a film,</i> 7 00:01:07,467 --> 00:01:09,662 <i>with a long piece of black leader.</i> 8 00:01:09,869 --> 00:01:13,669 <i>If they don't see happiness in the</i> <i>picture, at least they'll see the black. " 9 00:01:47,774 --> 00:01:51,175 <i>He wrote, "I'm just back</i> <i>from Hokkaido, the northern island.</i> 10 00:01:51,744 --> 00:01:56,408 <i>Rich and hurried Japanese take the plane.</i> <i>Others take the ferry.</i> 11 00:01:56,616 --> 00:01:59,278 <i>Waiting, immobility,</i> <i>snatches of sleep - 12 00:01:59,486 --> 00:02:01,977 <i>curiously it all makes me think</i> <i>of some past or future war.</i> 13 00:02:02,188 --> 00:02:04,713 <i>Night trains, air raids,</i> <i>fall-out shelters.</i> 14 00:02:04,924 --> 00:02:08,724 <i>Small fragments of war</i> <i>enshrined in everyday life. " 15 00:02:29,015 --> 00:02:32,075 <i>He liked the fragility</i> <i>of those moments suspended in time,</i> 16 00:02:32,285 --> 00:02:36,381 <i>memories whose only function</i> <i>was to leave behind memories.</i> 17 00:02:36,589 --> 00:02:40,685 <i>He wrote, "After circling the globe,</i> <i>only banality still interests me.</i> 18 00:02:40,894 --> 00:02:45,058 <i>On this trip I've tracked it relentlessly,</i> <i>like a bounty hunter.</i> 19 00:02:46,900 --> 00:02:48,868 <i>At dawn, we'll be in Tokyo. " 20 00:03:14,360 --> 00:03:16,385 <i>He used to write me from Africa.</i> 21 00:03:16,596 --> 00:03:20,692 <i>He contrasted African time</i> <i>with European and Asian time.</i> 22 00:03:20,900 --> 00:03:24,495 <i>He said that in the 19th century,</i> <i>mankind had come to terms with space,</i> 23 00:03:24,704 --> 00:03:28,071 <i>and that the great question of the 20th</i> <i>would be different concepts of time.</i> 24 00:03:28,274 --> 00:03:29,639 <i>"By the way,</i> 25 00:03:29,842 --> 00:03:33,278 <i>did you know that</i> <i>there are emus in the Ile de France?"</i> 26 00:03:42,555 --> 00:03:44,523 <i>He wrote</i> <i>that in the Bijago Islands,</i> 27 00:03:44,724 --> 00:03:47,818 <i>it's the young girls</i> <i>who choose their fianc�s.</i> 28 00:03:48,294 --> 00:03:52,924 <i>He wrote that in the suburbs of Tokyo,</i> <i>there's a temple consecrated to cats.</i> 29 00:04:13,286 --> 00:04:16,813 <i>"I wish I could convey the simplicity,</i> <i>the lack of affectation of this couple</i> 30 00:04:17,023 --> 00:04:23,087 <i>who'd come to place an inscribed</i> <i>wooden slat in the cat cemetery</i> 31 00:04:23,296 --> 00:04:26,322 <i>so that their cat Tora</i> <i>would be protected.</i> 32 00:04:26,532 --> 00:04:29,467 <i>No, she wasn't dead.</i> <i>She'd just run away.</i> 33 00:04:29,669 --> 00:04:33,070 <i>But on the day of her death,</i> <i>no one would know how to pray for her,</i> 34 00:04:33,273 --> 00:04:37,369 <i>how to intercede with death so that</i> <i>he would call her by her right name.</i> 35 00:04:38,011 --> 00:04:40,844 <i>So they had to come in the rain</i> 36 00:04:41,047 --> 00:04:46,644 <i>to perform the rite that would repair</i> <i>the web of time where it had been broken. " 37 00:04:58,498 --> 00:05:00,489 <i>He wrote,</i> 38 00:05:00,700 --> 00:05:03,999 <i>"I'll have spent my life trying to</i> <i>understand the function of remembering,</i> 39 00:05:04,203 --> 00:05:07,400 <i>which is not the opposite of forgetting,</i> <i>but rather its inner lining.</i> 40 00:05:07,607 --> 00:05:11,634 <i>We don't remember. We rewrite memory</i> <i>much as history is rewritten.</i> 41 00:05:12,979 --> 00:05:15,812 <i>How can one remember thirst?"</i> 42 00:05:31,397 --> 00:05:34,389 <i>He didn't like</i> <i>to dwell on poverty,</i> 43 00:05:34,600 --> 00:05:36,431 <i>but in everything</i> <i>that he wanted to show,</i> 44 00:05:36,636 --> 00:05:39,571 <i>there were also</i> <i>the failures of the Japanese model.</i> 45 00:05:39,772 --> 00:05:44,300 <i>"A world full of bums, of lumpens,</i> <i>of outcasts, of Koreans.</i> 46 00:05:45,411 --> 00:05:49,939 <i>Too broke to afford drugs,</i> <i>they get drunk on beer or fermented milk.</i> 47 00:05:50,650 --> 00:05:54,086 <i>This morning in Namidabashi,</i> <i>20 minutes from the glories of downtown,</i> 48 00:05:54,287 --> 00:05:58,951 <i>a character took his revenge on society</i> <i>by directing traffic at this intersection.</i> 49 00:05:59,225 --> 00:06:01,785 <i>Luxury for them would be</i> <i>a large bottle of sake</i> 50 00:06:01,994 --> 00:06:05,623 <i>of the type poured over tombs</i> <i>on the day of the dead.</i> 51 00:06:34,127 --> 00:06:37,255 <i>I bought a round</i> <i>in a bar in Namidabashi,</i> 52 00:06:37,463 --> 00:06:40,091 <i>a place where people stare</i> <i>at each other with equality.</i> 53 00:06:40,299 --> 00:06:45,259 <i>The threshold below which every man</i> <i>is as good as any other, and knows it. " 54 00:06:58,918 --> 00:07:02,854 <i>He told me about the jetty on Fogo</i> <i>in the Cape Verde Islands.</i> 55 00:07:03,856 --> 00:07:07,553 <i>"How long have they been there</i> <i>waiting for the boat?</i> 56 00:07:07,760 --> 00:07:10,126 <i>Patient as pebbles,</i> <i>but ready to pounce.</i> 57 00:07:10,797 --> 00:07:14,062 <i>They're a people of wanderers,</i> <i>of navigators, of world travelers.</i> 58 00:07:15,468 --> 00:07:18,869 <i>They arose from crossbreeding</i> <i>on these rocks that the Portuguese used</i> 59 00:07:19,071 --> 00:07:21,198 <i>as a marshaling yard</i> <i>for their colonies.</i> 60 00:07:21,407 --> 00:07:24,672 <i>A people of nothing, a people</i> <i>of emptiness, a vertical people.</i> 61 00:07:25,645 --> 00:07:27,306 <i>Frankly,</i> 62 00:07:27,513 --> 00:07:29,208 <i>isn't it stupid to tell people,</i> 63 00:07:29,415 --> 00:07:33,146 <i>like they teach in film school,</i> <i>not to look at the camera?"</i> 64 00:07:46,165 --> 00:07:47,632 <i>He wrote...</i> 65 00:07:49,168 --> 00:07:52,296 <i>"The Sahel is not only</i> <i>what is shown of it when it is too late.</i> 66 00:07:52,505 --> 00:07:56,771 <i>Drought seeps into this land</i> <i>like water into a leaking boat.</i> 67 00:07:56,976 --> 00:07:59,501 <i>The animals resurrected</i> <i>for carnival in Bissau</i> 68 00:07:59,712 --> 00:08:01,543 <i>will be petrified again</i> 69 00:08:01,747 --> 00:08:04,944 <i>as soon as a new attack</i> <i>has changed the savannah into a desert.</i> 70 00:08:05,151 --> 00:08:09,281 <i>It's a state of survival that rich countries</i> <i>have forgotten, with one exception.</i> 71 00:08:09,489 --> 00:08:11,719 <i>You guessed it. Japan.</i> 72 00:08:13,793 --> 00:08:16,694 <i>My constant comings and goings</i> <i>are not a search for contrasts.</i> 73 00:08:16,896 --> 00:08:19,296 <i>They're a journey</i> <i>to the extreme poles of survival. " 74 00:09:48,654 --> 00:09:50,713 <i>He spoke to me of Sei Shonagon,</i> 75 00:09:50,923 --> 00:09:54,188 <i>a lady-in-waiting to Princess Sadako</i> <i>in the 11th century,</i> 76 00:09:54,393 --> 00:09:56,691 <i>during the Heian period.</i> 77 00:09:58,931 --> 00:10:01,126 <i>"Do we ever know</i> <i>where history is really made?</i> 78 00:10:01,334 --> 00:10:04,997 <i>Rulers used complicated</i> <i>strategies to fight one another,</i> 79 00:10:05,204 --> 00:10:08,435 <i>while real power lay</i> <i>with a family of hereditary regents.</i> 80 00:10:08,641 --> 00:10:12,634 <i>The emperor's court was but a place</i> <i>of intrigues and intellectual games.</i> 81 00:10:12,845 --> 00:10:17,145 <i>But by learning to draw</i> <i>a sort of melancholy comfort</i> 82 00:10:17,350 --> 00:10:20,945 <i>from the contemplation</i> <i>of the tiniest things,</i> 83 00:10:21,153 --> 00:10:24,680 <i>this small group of idlers</i> <i>left a mark on Japanese sensibility</i> 84 00:10:24,890 --> 00:10:28,519 <i>much deeper than the mediocre</i> <i>thundering of the politicians.</i> 85 00:10:28,728 --> 00:10:31,219 <i>Shonagon had a passion for lists.</i> 86 00:10:31,430 --> 00:10:33,625 <i>A list of 'elegant things, ' 87 00:10:33,833 --> 00:10:35,892 <i>of 'distressing things, ' 88 00:10:36,102 --> 00:10:39,299 <i>or even of</i> <i>'things not worth doing. ' 89 00:10:39,505 --> 00:10:42,963 <i>One day she drew up a list</i> <i>of 'things that quicken the heart. ' 90 00:10:43,175 --> 00:10:45,666 <i>Not a bad criterion,</i> <i>I realize when I'm filming.</i> 91 00:10:45,878 --> 00:10:47,345 <i>I bow to the economic miracle,</i> 92 00:10:47,546 --> 00:10:50,174 <i>but I really want to show</i> <i>the neighborhood celebrations. " 93 00:14:26,765 --> 00:14:28,357 <i>He wrote...</i> 94 00:14:29,268 --> 00:14:31,031 <i>"Coming back</i> <i>along the Chiba coast,</i> 95 00:14:31,237 --> 00:14:35,970 <i>I thought of Shonagon's list of signs</i> <i>one need only name to quicken the heart.</i> 96 00:14:36,175 --> 00:14:37,802 <i>Only name.</i> 97 00:14:38,010 --> 00:14:41,002 <i>To us, a sun is not quite a sun</i> <i>unless it is 'radiant, ' 98 00:14:41,213 --> 00:14:43,078 <i>a spring not quite a spring</i> <i>unless it's 'crystal-clear. ' 99 00:14:43,282 --> 00:14:45,216 <i>Here, interjecting adjectives</i> 100 00:14:45,417 --> 00:14:48,477 <i>would be as rude</i> <i>as leaving price tags on purchases.</i> 101 00:14:49,722 --> 00:14:52,247 <i>Japanese poetry never modifies.</i> 102 00:14:52,458 --> 00:14:54,619 <i>There is a way</i> <i>of saying boat, rock, mist,</i> 103 00:14:54,827 --> 00:14:56,886 <i>frog, crow, hail,</i> 104 00:14:57,096 --> 00:15:00,554 <i>heron, chrysanthemum</i> <i>that includes them all.</i> 105 00:15:00,866 --> 00:15:03,858 <i>Newspapers recently chronicled</i> <i>the story of a man from Nagoya.</i> 106 00:15:04,470 --> 00:15:06,461 <i>The woman he loved</i> <i>died last year,</i> 107 00:15:06,672 --> 00:15:09,800 <i>and he'd drowned himself in work,</i> <i>Japanese-style, like a madman.</i> 108 00:15:10,009 --> 00:15:14,002 <i>It seems he even made</i> <i>an important discovery in electronics.</i> 109 00:15:14,213 --> 00:15:17,774 <i>And then, in the month of May,</i> <i>he killed himself.</i> 110 00:15:17,983 --> 00:15:22,044 <i>They say he couldn't bear</i> <i>to hear the word 'spring. "'</i> 111 00:15:58,757 --> 00:16:01,658 <i>He described</i> <i>his reunion with Tokyo.</i> 112 00:16:02,761 --> 00:16:04,991 <i>"Like a cat home from vacation</i> 113 00:16:05,197 --> 00:16:07,597 <i>who immediately starts</i> <i>to inspect familiar places. " 114 00:16:08,167 --> 00:16:10,431 <i>He ran to see</i> <i>if all was where it should be.</i> 115 00:16:10,636 --> 00:16:13,730 <i>The Ginza owl,</i> <i>the Shimbashi locomotive,</i> 116 00:16:13,939 --> 00:16:16,601 <i>the Temple of the Fox</i> <i>above the Mitsukoshi department store,</i> 117 00:16:16,809 --> 00:16:19,607 <i>which he found invaded</i> <i>by little girls and rock singers.</i> 118 00:16:19,812 --> 00:16:23,009 <i>He learned it was now</i> <i>little girls who made and unmade stars,</i> 119 00:16:23,215 --> 00:16:26,013 <i>and that producers</i> <i>trembled before them.</i> 120 00:16:26,218 --> 00:16:29,585 <i>He was told that a disfigured woman</i> <i>took off her mask in front of passers-by</i> 121 00:16:29,788 --> 00:16:32,848 <i>and scratched them</i> <i>if they didn't find her beautiful.</i> 122 00:16:33,058 --> 00:16:34,548 <i>Everything interested him.</i> 123 00:16:34,760 --> 00:16:38,787 <i>He who didn't give a damn</i> <i>about soccer stars or racetrack winners</i> 124 00:16:38,998 --> 00:16:43,594 <i>asked feverishly about Chiyonofuji's</i> <i>ranking in the last sumo tournament.</i> 125 00:16:43,802 --> 00:16:47,169 <i>He asked for news</i> <i>of the imperial family, the crown prince,</i> 126 00:16:47,373 --> 00:16:51,002 <i>or Tokyo's oldest mobster,</i> <i>who appears regularly on television</i> 127 00:16:51,210 --> 00:16:52,905 <i>to teach goodness to children.</i> 128 00:16:53,112 --> 00:16:55,580 <i>The simple joys he'd never known - 129 00:16:55,781 --> 00:16:58,841 <i>returning to one's native land</i> <i>and family home - 130 00:16:59,051 --> 00:17:02,418 <i>he found among the city's</i> <i>12 million anonymous residents.</i> 131 00:18:11,757 --> 00:18:13,452 <i>He wrote...</i> 132 00:18:13,659 --> 00:18:16,753 <i>"Tokyo is crisscrossed by trains,</i> <i>knit together by electric wires.</i> 133 00:18:16,962 --> 00:18:19,055 <i>She shows her veins.</i> 134 00:18:19,631 --> 00:18:21,861 <i>They say that TV</i> <i>is making her people illiterate,</i> 135 00:18:22,067 --> 00:18:24,763 <i>but I've never seen</i> <i>so many people reading in the streets.</i> 136 00:18:24,970 --> 00:18:26,631 <i>Perhaps they only read</i> <i>in the street,</i> 137 00:18:26,839 --> 00:18:30,172 <i>or perhaps they're just pretending</i> <i>to read, these yellow men.</i> 138 00:18:30,409 --> 00:18:34,038 <i>I make my appointments at Kinokuniya,</i> <i>the big bookshop in Shinjuku.</i> 139 00:18:34,480 --> 00:18:36,448 <i>The graphic genius</i> <i>that allowed the Japanese</i> 140 00:18:36,648 --> 00:18:38,707 <i>to invent Cinemascope</i> <i>ten centuries before the movies</i> 141 00:18:38,917 --> 00:18:41,715 <i>compensates a bit for the sad fate</i> <i>of the comic-strip heroines,</i> 142 00:18:41,920 --> 00:18:45,378 <i>victims of heartless writers</i> <i>and a castrating censorship.</i> 143 00:18:45,591 --> 00:18:48,560 <i>Sometimes they escape,</i> <i>and you find them again on the walls.</i> 144 00:18:49,027 --> 00:18:51,791 <i>The entire city</i> <i>is a comic strip.</i> 145 00:19:00,739 --> 00:19:02,764 <i>It's planet Mongo.</i> 146 00:19:04,276 --> 00:19:05,675 <i>One can't miss the statuary,</i> 147 00:19:05,878 --> 00:19:08,108 <i>from plasticized baroque</i> <i>to Stalin-sensual,</i> 148 00:19:08,814 --> 00:19:11,806 <i>and the giant faces</i> <i>with their imposing stares.</i> 149 00:19:12,284 --> 00:19:17,153 <i>Pictures bigger than people,</i> <i>voyeurizing the voyeurs.</i> 150 00:19:25,564 --> 00:19:30,001 <i>At nightfall, the megalopolis</i> <i>breaks down into villages.</i> 151 00:19:30,202 --> 00:19:34,070 <i>With its country cemeteries in the shadow</i> <i>of banks, its stations and temples,</i> 152 00:19:34,273 --> 00:19:37,800 <i>each district of Tokyo once again</i> <i>becomes a tidy, ingenuous little town,</i> 153 00:19:38,010 --> 00:19:40,444 <i>nestled among the skyscrapers. " 154 00:19:53,525 --> 00:19:56,119 <i>The small bar in Shinjuku</i> <i>reminded him of that Indian flute</i> 155 00:19:56,328 --> 00:19:59,092 <i>whose sound can only be heard</i> <i>by the person playing it.</i> 156 00:19:59,298 --> 00:20:02,233 <i>He might have cried out - as in</i> <i>a Godard film or a Shakespeare play - 157 00:20:02,501 --> 00:20:05,026 <i>"Where is that music</i> <i>coming from?"</i> 158 00:20:06,572 --> 00:20:10,303 <i>Later he told me he'd eaten</i> <i>at the restaurant in Nishi Nippori</i> 159 00:20:10,509 --> 00:20:13,808 <i>where Mr. Yamada practices</i> <i>the difficult art of "action cooking."</i> 160 00:20:19,785 --> 00:20:22,618 <i>He said that by carefully watching</i> <i>Mr. Yamada's gestures</i> 161 00:20:22,821 --> 00:20:24,789 <i>and his way</i> <i>of mixing the ingredients,</i> 162 00:20:24,990 --> 00:20:27,618 <i>one could meditate profitably</i> <i>on fundamental concepts</i> 163 00:20:27,826 --> 00:20:31,057 <i>common to painting,</i> <i>philosophy and martial arts.</i> 164 00:20:31,263 --> 00:20:36,792 <i>He claimed that Mr. Yamada possessed,</i> <i>in his impressively humble way,</i> 165 00:20:37,002 --> 00:20:38,367 <i>the essence of style,</i> 166 00:20:38,570 --> 00:20:42,301 <i>and that it therefore fell to him</i> <i>to use his invisible brush</i> 167 00:20:42,574 --> 00:20:47,807 <i>to write upon this first day in Tokyo</i> <i>the words "The End."</i> 168 00:20:52,217 --> 00:20:55,152 <i>"I spent the day in front of my TV,</i> <i>that box of memories.</i> 169 00:20:55,354 --> 00:20:57,788 <i>I was in Nara</i> <i>with the sacred deer.</i> 170 00:20:57,990 --> 00:20:59,753 <i>I was taking a picture,</i> 171 00:20:59,958 --> 00:21:01,755 <i>unaware that in the 15th century</i> <i>Basho had written...</i> 172 00:21:02,961 --> 00:21:07,227 <i>'The willow sees</i> <i>the heron's image upside down. ' 173 00:21:17,576 --> 00:21:20,101 <i>Commercials</i> <i>become a kind of haiku</i> 174 00:21:20,312 --> 00:21:22,610 <i>to the eye used</i> <i>to Western atrocities in the genre.</i> 175 00:21:22,814 --> 00:21:25,942 <i>Not understanding obviously</i> <i>adds to the pleasure.</i> 176 00:21:26,151 --> 00:21:28,085 <i>For one slightly</i> <i>hallucinatory moment,</i> 177 00:21:28,287 --> 00:21:31,256 <i>I had the impression</i> <i>that I understood Japanese,</i> 178 00:21:31,890 --> 00:21:35,451 <i>but it was a cultural program</i> <i>about G�rard de Nerval. " 179 00:21:35,661 --> 00:21:38,960 <i>Memories of a visit to the tomb</i> <i>of Jean-Jacques Rousseau,</i> 180 00:21:39,164 --> 00:21:41,530 <i>a simple and moving</i> <i>monument in stone</i> 181 00:21:41,733 --> 00:21:44,497 <i>guarded by tall trees.</i> 182 00:22:04,589 --> 00:22:06,853 <i>"8.40. Cambodia.</i> 183 00:22:07,059 --> 00:22:08,458 <i>From Rousseau</i> <i>to the Khmer Rouge - 184 00:22:08,660 --> 00:22:10,958 <i>coincidence,</i> <i>or a sense of history?</i> 185 00:22:11,363 --> 00:22:13,092 <i>In</i> Apocalypse Now, 186 00:22:13,298 --> 00:22:15,630 <i>Brando uttered a few definitive - <i>and incommunicable - 187 00:22:15,834 --> 00:22:18,200 <i>sentences on the subject.</i> 188 00:22:18,403 --> 00:22:20,633 <i>'Horror has a face and a name.</i> 189 00:22:20,839 --> 00:22:22,898 <i>You must make a friend of horror. ' 190 00:22:29,981 --> 00:22:32,176 <i>To cast out the horror</i> <i>that has a name and a face,</i> 191 00:22:32,384 --> 00:22:34,978 <i>you must give it another name</i> <i>and another face.</i> 192 00:22:35,187 --> 00:22:39,123 <i>Japanese horror movies have</i> <i>the sly beauty of certain corpses.</i> 193 00:22:39,324 --> 00:22:41,724 <i>One is sometimes stunned</i> <i>by so much cruelty.</i> 194 00:22:41,927 --> 00:22:46,193 <i>One seeks its source in Asian people's</i> <i>long familiarity with suffering</i> 195 00:22:46,398 --> 00:22:48,593 <i>that requires</i> <i>that even pain be ornate.</i> 196 00:22:48,800 --> 00:22:50,791 <i>And then comes the reward.</i> 197 00:22:51,002 --> 00:22:54,438 <i>The monsters are vanquished</i> <i>and Natsume Masako arises.</i> 198 00:22:54,639 --> 00:22:57,665 <i>Absolute beauty too</i> <i>has a name and a face.</i> 199 00:23:09,654 --> 00:23:12,054 <i>But the more you watch</i> <i>Japanese television,</i> 200 00:23:12,257 --> 00:23:14,817 <i>the more you feel</i> <i>it's watching you.</i> 201 00:24:02,941 --> 00:24:05,671 <i>Even television newscasts</i> <i>bear witness to the fact</i> 202 00:24:05,877 --> 00:24:08,368 <i>that the eye's magical function</i> <i>is at the center of all things.</i> 203 00:24:08,580 --> 00:24:10,343 <i>It's election time.</i> 204 00:24:10,549 --> 00:24:12,608 <i>Winning candidates black out</i> 205 00:24:12,818 --> 00:24:16,310 <i>the empty eye of Daruma,</i> <i>the spirit of luck,</i> 206 00:24:16,555 --> 00:24:20,321 <i>while losing candidates, sad but dignified,</i> <i>carry off their one-eyed Daruma.</i> 207 00:24:23,428 --> 00:24:26,056 <i>The most indecipherable images</i> <i>are those of Europe.</i> 208 00:24:26,264 --> 00:24:30,633 <i>I watch the images of a film</i> <i>whose soundtrack will be added later.</i> 209 00:24:30,836 --> 00:24:33,464 <i>It took me six months</i> <i>for Poland.</i> 210 00:24:37,375 --> 00:24:40,344 <i>But I have no difficulty</i> <i>with the local earthquakes,</i> 211 00:24:40,545 --> 00:24:44,845 <i>though I must admit last night's quake</i> <i>helped me greatly to grasp the problem.</i> 212 00:24:45,417 --> 00:24:47,578 <i>Poetry is born of insecurity.</i> 213 00:24:48,453 --> 00:24:51,889 <i>Wandering Jews,</i> <i>quaking Japanese.</i> 214 00:24:54,192 --> 00:24:57,559 <i>Living on a rug that jesting nature is</i> <i>ever ready to pull out from under them,</i> 215 00:24:57,762 --> 00:25:00,162 <i>they've learned to inhabit</i> <i>a world of appearances,</i> 216 00:25:00,365 --> 00:25:02,560 <i>fragile, fleeting, revocable,</i> 217 00:25:02,767 --> 00:25:04,667 <i>of trains that fly</i> <i>from planet to planet,</i> 218 00:25:04,870 --> 00:25:07,862 <i>of samurai fighting</i> <i>in an immutable past.</i> 219 00:25:08,073 --> 00:25:11,042 <i>It's called</i> <i>the impermanence of things.</i> 220 00:25:39,971 --> 00:25:43,031 <i>I watched it all,</i> <i>even the evening shows,</i> 221 00:25:43,241 --> 00:25:44,606 <i>the so-called adult shows.</i> 222 00:25:44,809 --> 00:25:48,438 <i>The same hypocrisy as in the comic strips,</i> <i>but this is a coded hypocrisy.</i> 223 00:25:48,647 --> 00:25:52,413 <i>Censorship is not the mutilation</i> <i>of the show. It is the show.</i> 224 00:25:52,617 --> 00:25:54,107 <i>The code is the message.</i> 225 00:25:54,319 --> 00:25:59,086 <i>It points to the absolute by hiding it,</i> <i>like religions have always done. " 226 00:26:12,804 --> 00:26:14,772 <i>That year, a new face appeared</i> 227 00:26:14,973 --> 00:26:18,636 <i>among the great faces adorning</i> <i>the streets of Tokyo. The face of the pope.</i> 228 00:26:18,843 --> 00:26:20,811 <i>Treasures that had never</i> <i>left the Vatican</i> 229 00:26:21,012 --> 00:26:24,106 <i>were displayed on the seventh floor</i> <i>of the Sogo department store.</i> 230 00:26:24,749 --> 00:26:26,478 <i>He wrote...</i> 231 00:26:26,851 --> 00:26:30,719 <i>"It's curiosity, of course, but also</i> <i>a hint of industrial espionage.</i> 232 00:26:31,623 --> 00:26:33,591 <i>I imagine them bringing out</i> <i>in two years</i> 233 00:26:33,792 --> 00:26:36,818 <i>a more efficient and less expensive</i> <i>version of Catholicism.</i> 234 00:26:38,029 --> 00:26:40,293 <i>But there's also the fascination</i> <i>associated with the sacred,</i> 235 00:26:40,498 --> 00:26:42,659 <i>even when it's someone else's.</i> 236 00:27:23,975 --> 00:27:29,208 <i>So when will French department stores</i> <i>exhibit relics sacred to the Japanese</i> 237 00:27:29,414 --> 00:27:32,542 <i>such as can be seen at Jozankei,</i> <i>on the island of Hokkaido?</i> 238 00:27:32,817 --> 00:27:37,186 <i>At first, one smiles at this combination</i> <i>museum, chapel and sex shop.</i> 239 00:27:37,389 --> 00:27:41,086 <i>As always in Japan, one admires how</i> <i>the walls between realms are so thin</i> 240 00:27:41,292 --> 00:27:43,817 <i>that one can in the same breath</i> <i>contemplate a statue,</i> 241 00:27:44,029 --> 00:27:45,758 <i>buy an inflatable doll</i> 242 00:27:45,964 --> 00:27:48,432 <i>and give the goddess of fertility</i> <i>the small offering</i> 243 00:27:48,633 --> 00:27:50,897 <i>that always accompanies</i> <i>her displays,</i> 244 00:27:51,102 --> 00:27:54,629 <i>displays whose frankness would render</i> <i>television's stratagems incomprehensible</i> 245 00:27:54,906 --> 00:28:00,401 <i>but for the fact that sex organs may</i> <i>only be shown severed from the body.</i> 246 00:28:12,791 --> 00:28:14,952 <i>One would like to</i> <i>believe in a world before the fall,</i> 247 00:28:15,160 --> 00:28:17,219 <i>inaccessible to the complications</i> <i>of a puritanism</i> 248 00:28:17,429 --> 00:28:20,421 <i>whose phony shadow was imposed</i> <i>on it by American occupation,</i> 249 00:28:20,732 --> 00:28:23,701 <i>where people who gather laughing</i> <i>around the votive fountain,</i> 250 00:28:23,902 --> 00:28:26,132 <i>the woman who touches it</i> <i>with a friendly gesture,</i> 251 00:28:26,337 --> 00:28:29,272 <i>share in the same</i> <i>cosmic innocence.</i> 252 00:28:29,841 --> 00:28:32,571 <i>The second part of the museum,</i> <i>with its pairs of coupling animals,</i> 253 00:28:32,777 --> 00:28:35,541 <i>would then be the earthly paradise</i> <i>as we've always dreamed of it.</i> 254 00:28:35,747 --> 00:28:37,044 <i>Not so sure.</i> 255 00:28:37,248 --> 00:28:40,615 <i>Animal innocence may be a trick</i> <i>for getting around censorship,</i> 256 00:28:41,119 --> 00:28:44,145 <i>but perhaps also the mirror</i> <i>of an impossible reconciliation,</i> 257 00:28:44,355 --> 00:28:49,292 <i>and even without original sin, this</i> <i>earthly paradise may be a paradise lost.</i> 258 00:28:51,629 --> 00:28:54,257 <i>In the glossy splendor</i> <i>of the gentle animals of Jozankei,</i> 259 00:28:54,466 --> 00:28:57,435 <i>I read the fundamental rift</i> <i>of Japanese society,</i> 260 00:28:57,635 --> 00:29:00,297 <i>the rift that separates</i> <i>men from women.</i> 261 00:29:00,505 --> 00:29:03,235 <i>In life it seems to manifest</i> <i>in just two ways.</i> 262 00:29:03,441 --> 00:29:08,037 <i>Violent slaughter, or a discreet</i> <i>melancholy resembling the Shonagon's,</i> 263 00:29:08,246 --> 00:29:12,512 <i>which the Japanese express</i> <i>in a single - and untranslatable - word.</i> 264 00:29:12,717 --> 00:29:14,582 <i>Bringing man down</i> <i>to the level of the beasts</i> 265 00:29:14,786 --> 00:29:16,811 <i>against which</i> <i>the church fathers inveighed</i> 266 00:29:17,021 --> 00:29:20,388 <i>becomes here the challenge of the beasts</i> <i>to the 'poignancy of things, ' 267 00:29:20,592 --> 00:29:22,890 <i>to a melancholy whose tone</i> <i>I can convey</i> 268 00:29:23,094 --> 00:29:26,063 <i>by copying a few lines</i> <i>from Samura Koichi.</i> 269 00:29:27,832 --> 00:29:30,767 <i>'Who said that time</i> <i>heals all wounds?</i> 270 00:29:31,970 --> 00:29:35,963 <i>Better to say that time heals</i> <i>everything except wounds.</i> 271 00:29:36,241 --> 00:29:39,904 <i>With time, the hurt of separation</i> <i>loses its real limits.</i> 272 00:29:40,111 --> 00:29:43,444 <i>With time, the desired body</i> <i>will soon disappear,</i> 273 00:29:43,648 --> 00:29:46,617 <i>and if the desiring body has already</i> <i>ceased to exist for the other,</i> 274 00:29:46,818 --> 00:29:50,652 <i>then what remains</i> <i>is a disembodied wound. "'</i> 275 00:29:58,396 --> 00:30:00,455 <i>He wrote</i> <i>that the Japanese secret - 276 00:30:00,665 --> 00:30:03,759 <i>what Levi-Strauss called</i> <i>the poignancy of things - 277 00:30:03,968 --> 00:30:06,493 <i>implied the faculty</i> <i>of communing with things,</i> 278 00:30:06,704 --> 00:30:09,969 <i>of entering into them,</i> <i>of being them for a moment.</i> 279 00:30:10,375 --> 00:30:12,969 <i>It's only natural that, in their turn,</i> <i>they should be like us - 280 00:30:13,178 --> 00:30:14,907 <i>perishable and immortal.</i> 281 00:30:22,220 --> 00:30:25,451 <i>He wrote, "Animism is</i> <i>a familiar notion in Africa.</i> 282 00:30:25,657 --> 00:30:27,682 <i>It's less often applied to Japan.</i> 283 00:30:27,892 --> 00:30:29,792 <i>What then shall we call</i> <i>this diffuse belief</i> 284 00:30:29,994 --> 00:30:33,953 <i>according to which every fragment</i> <i>of creation has its invisible counterpart?</i> 285 00:30:34,499 --> 00:30:36,990 <i>Building a factory or skyscraper</i> 286 00:30:37,202 --> 00:30:40,365 <i>begins with a ceremony</i> <i>to appease the god who owns the land.</i> 287 00:30:40,572 --> 00:30:44,508 <i>There's a ceremony for brushes,</i> <i>abacuses, even rusty needles.</i> 288 00:30:44,709 --> 00:30:49,408 <i>There's one on September 25th for</i> <i>the repose of the soul of broken dolls.</i> 289 00:30:49,614 --> 00:30:52,515 <i>The dolls are piled up</i> <i>in the Temple of Kiyomizu - 290 00:30:52,717 --> 00:30:57,245 <i>which is consecrated to Kannon,</i> <i>the goddess of compassion - 291 00:30:57,455 --> 00:30:59,719 <i>and then burned in public.</i> 292 00:31:35,460 --> 00:31:37,325 <i>I watched the participants.</i> 293 00:31:37,762 --> 00:31:39,889 <i>I think the people who saw off</i> <i>the kamikaze pilots</i> 294 00:31:40,098 --> 00:31:42,760 <i>had the same look on their faces. " 295 00:32:15,500 --> 00:32:17,627 <i>He wrote that the pictures</i> <i>of Guinea-Bissau</i> 296 00:32:17,835 --> 00:32:20,235 <i>ought to be accompanied</i> <i>by music from the Cape Verde Islands.</i> 297 00:32:20,438 --> 00:32:23,407 <i>That would be our contribution</i> <i>to the unity dreamed of by Amilcar Cabral.</i> 298 00:32:28,246 --> 00:32:32,376 <i>"Why should a country so small</i> <i>and so poor interest the world?</i> 299 00:32:32,583 --> 00:32:34,676 <i>They did what they could.</i> 300 00:32:34,886 --> 00:32:38,287 <i>They chased Portugal out,</i> <i>so traumatizing its army</i> 301 00:32:38,489 --> 00:32:40,923 <i>that it moved to overthrow</i> <i>its own dictatorship</i> 302 00:32:41,125 --> 00:32:43,685 <i>and led one briefly to believe</i> <i>in a new revolution in Europe.</i> 303 00:32:43,895 --> 00:32:45,556 <i>Who remembers all that?</i> 304 00:32:45,763 --> 00:32:48,630 <i>History throws its empty bottles</i> <i>out the window.</i> 305 00:32:52,637 --> 00:32:55,037 <i>This morning I was</i> <i>on the dock at Pidjiguiti,</i> 306 00:32:55,239 --> 00:32:59,699 <i>where everything began in 1959, when the</i> <i>first victims of the struggle were killed.</i> 307 00:32:59,944 --> 00:33:03,072 <i>It may be as difficult</i> <i>to recognize Africa in this leaden fog</i> 308 00:33:03,281 --> 00:33:05,272 <i>as it is to recognize the struggle</i> 309 00:33:05,483 --> 00:33:07,747 <i>in the rather dull activity</i> <i>of tropical longshoremen.</i> 310 00:33:08,019 --> 00:33:09,953 <i>Rumor has it</i> <i>that every third-world leader</i> 311 00:33:10,154 --> 00:33:12,486 <i>coined the same phrase</i> <i>the morning after independence.</i> 312 00:33:12,690 --> 00:33:15,181 <i>'Now the real problems begin. ' 313 00:33:15,526 --> 00:33:18,723 <i>Cabral never got a chance to say it.</i> <i>He was assassinated first.</i> 314 00:33:18,930 --> 00:33:22,297 <i>But the problems began,</i> <i>and went on, and are still going on.</i> 315 00:33:22,500 --> 00:33:25,230 <i>Rather unexciting problems</i> <i>for revolutionary romanticism.</i> 316 00:33:25,436 --> 00:33:27,904 <i>To work, to produce,</i> <i>to distribute,</i> 317 00:33:28,106 --> 00:33:30,370 <i>to overcome postwar exhaustion</i> 318 00:33:30,575 --> 00:33:33,169 <i>and the temptations</i> <i>of power and privilege.</i> 319 00:33:33,378 --> 00:33:37,508 <i>But after all, history's only bitter</i> <i>to those who expect a sugar coating.</i> 320 00:33:54,999 --> 00:33:58,457 <i>My personal problem</i> <i>was more specific.</i> 321 00:33:58,669 --> 00:34:00,603 <i>How to film</i> <i>the ladies of Bissau?</i> 322 00:34:00,805 --> 00:34:03,831 <i>Apparently, the eye's magical function</i> <i>was working against me there.</i> 323 00:34:04,442 --> 00:34:06,603 <i>In the marketplaces</i> <i>of Bissau and Cape Verde,</i> 324 00:34:06,811 --> 00:34:08,938 <i>I again encountered</i> <i>those egalitarian stares</i> 325 00:34:09,147 --> 00:34:12,810 <i>and this sequence of glances</i> <i>that bordered on seduction.</i> 326 00:34:13,684 --> 00:34:15,447 <i>I see her.</i> 327 00:34:16,320 --> 00:34:18,117 <i>She sees me.</i> 328 00:34:18,356 --> 00:34:20,586 <i>She knows that I see her.</i> 329 00:34:23,294 --> 00:34:24,727 <i>She glances my way,</i> 330 00:34:24,929 --> 00:34:28,456 <i>but furtively, as if I'm not</i> <i>really the object of her gaze.</i> 331 00:34:28,666 --> 00:34:31,100 <i>Finally, the direct gaze</i> 332 00:34:32,403 --> 00:34:35,930 <i>lasting 1/24th of a second,</i> <i>the length of a film frame.</i> 333 00:34:41,746 --> 00:34:45,512 <i>All women have a built-in kernel</i> <i>of indestructibility,</i> 334 00:34:45,750 --> 00:34:48,810 <i>and men's task has always been</i> <i>to keep them from realizing it</i> 335 00:34:49,020 --> 00:34:50,578 <i>for as long as possible.</i> 336 00:34:50,788 --> 00:34:55,157 <i>African men are just as good</i> <i>at this task as others,</i> 337 00:34:55,359 --> 00:34:59,853 <i>but after a close look at African women,</i> <i>I wouldn't necessarily bet on the men. " 338 00:36:51,475 --> 00:36:54,069 <i>He told me the story</i> <i>of Hachiko the dog.</i> 339 00:36:54,278 --> 00:36:56,872 <i>"A dog waited for his master</i> <i>every day at the station.</i> 340 00:36:57,081 --> 00:36:59,879 <i>The master died,</i> <i>but the dog didn't know it,</i> 341 00:37:00,084 --> 00:37:02,746 <i>and he continued to wait,</i> <i>all his life.</i> 342 00:37:02,954 --> 00:37:05,616 <i>People were moved</i> <i>and brought him food.</i> 343 00:37:05,823 --> 00:37:10,260 <i>They still place sushi and rice cakes</i> <i>before the statue erected in his honor</i> 344 00:37:10,461 --> 00:37:13,259 <i>so that the faithful soul of Hachiko</i> <i>will never go hungry.</i> 345 00:37:19,270 --> 00:37:23,206 <i>Tokyo is full of these small legends</i> <i>and animal intercessors.</i> 346 00:37:23,674 --> 00:37:27,576 <i>The Mitsukoshi lion stands guard over</i> <i>what was once the empire of Mr. Okada,</i> 347 00:37:27,778 --> 00:37:29,803 <i>a great collector</i> <i>of French paintings,</i> 348 00:37:30,014 --> 00:37:31,879 <i>the man who rented</i> <i>the Ch�teau of Versailles</i> 349 00:37:32,083 --> 00:37:34,517 <i>to celebrate the 100th anniversary</i> <i>of his department stores.</i> 350 00:37:34,719 --> 00:37:36,949 <i>In the computer section</i> <i>of one such store,</i> 351 00:37:37,154 --> 00:37:39,179 <i>I've seen young Japanese</i> <i>exercising their brain muscles</i> 352 00:37:39,390 --> 00:37:41,881 <i>like young Athenians</i> <i>at the palestra.</i> 353 00:37:43,127 --> 00:37:45,095 <i>They have a war to win.</i> 354 00:37:45,296 --> 00:37:48,493 <i>History books of the future will perhaps</i> <i>rank the battle of the integrated circuit</i> 355 00:37:48,699 --> 00:37:50,826 <i>with the battles of Salamis</i> <i>or Agincourt.</i> 356 00:37:54,839 --> 00:37:58,741 <i>But they honor the unfortunate</i> <i>adversary by leaving other fields to him.</i> 357 00:37:58,943 --> 00:38:02,379 <i>Men's fashions this season are placed</i> <i>under the sign of John Kennedy. " 358 00:38:41,619 --> 00:38:44,213 <i>Like an old votive turtle</i> <i>stationed in the corner of a field,</i> 359 00:38:44,422 --> 00:38:48,620 <i>Mr. Akao, president</i> <i>of the Japanese Patriotic Party,</i> 360 00:38:48,826 --> 00:38:53,456 <i>rails from his rolling balcony</i> <i>against the international communist plot.</i> 361 00:38:54,265 --> 00:38:55,789 <i>He wrote...</i> 362 00:38:57,435 --> 00:39:00,063 <i>"The extreme right's vans,</i> <i>with their flags and megaphones,</i> 363 00:39:00,271 --> 00:39:02,000 <i>are part of the Tokyo landscape.</i> 364 00:39:02,206 --> 00:39:04,868 <i>Mr. Akao is their focal point.</i> 365 00:39:05,076 --> 00:39:07,670 <i>I think he'll have his own statue,</i> <i>like Hachiko the dog,</i> 366 00:39:07,878 --> 00:39:12,577 <i>at this intersection that he leaves</i> <i>only to go prophesy on the battlefields.</i> 367 00:39:18,322 --> 00:39:21,883 <i>He was at Narita in the '60s.</i> 368 00:39:22,093 --> 00:39:25,085 <i>Peasants fought an airport</i> <i>to be built on their land,</i> 369 00:39:25,296 --> 00:39:29,289 <i>with Mr. Akao denouncing Moscow's</i> <i>hand in everything that moved.</i> 370 00:39:30,801 --> 00:39:33,702 <i>Yurakucho is</i> <i>Tokyo's political arena.</i> 371 00:39:33,904 --> 00:39:36,668 <i>I once saw a monk there</i> <i>pray for peace in Vietnam.</i> 372 00:39:38,242 --> 00:39:40,176 <i>Today, young right-wing activists</i> 373 00:39:40,378 --> 00:39:43,870 <i>protest the annexation</i> <i>of the northern islands by the Russians.</i> 374 00:39:44,515 --> 00:39:47,006 <i>Sometimes they're told that</i> <i>Japan's commercial relations</i> 375 00:39:47,218 --> 00:39:49,152 <i>with the abominable occupier</i> <i>to the north</i> 376 00:39:49,353 --> 00:39:51,480 <i>are a thousand times better</i> <i>than with the American ally,</i> 377 00:39:51,689 --> 00:39:54,419 <i>who's always whining</i> <i>about economic aggression.</i> 378 00:39:54,625 --> 00:39:56,616 <i>Nothing is simple.</i> 379 00:40:01,999 --> 00:40:04,934 <i>On the other sidewalk,</i> <i>the left has the floor.</i> 380 00:40:05,469 --> 00:40:08,199 <i>Korean Catholic opposition</i> <i>leader Kim Dae Jung,</i> 381 00:40:08,406 --> 00:40:11,307 <i>kidnapped in Tokyo in '73</i> <i>by the South Korean Gestapo,</i> 382 00:40:11,842 --> 00:40:14,367 <i>is threatened</i> <i>with a death sentence.</i> 383 00:40:14,578 --> 00:40:16,546 <i>A group has begun</i> <i>a hunger strike.</i> 384 00:40:16,747 --> 00:40:19,944 <i>Some very young activists</i> <i>gather signatures in his support.</i> 385 00:41:03,227 --> 00:41:07,687 <i>I returned to Narita for the birthday</i> <i>of one of the victims of the struggle.</i> 386 00:41:08,365 --> 00:41:10,196 <i>The demonstration was unreal.</i> 387 00:41:10,401 --> 00:41:12,562 <i>I felt like I was in</i> Brigadoon, 388 00:41:12,770 --> 00:41:15,671 <i>like I'd woken up ten years later</i> <i>amid the same actors,</i> 389 00:41:15,873 --> 00:41:19,673 <i>the same blue-suited police</i> <i>and helmeted adolescents,</i> 390 00:41:19,877 --> 00:41:22,175 <i>the same slogan,</i> <i>the same banners,</i> 391 00:41:23,280 --> 00:41:26,306 <i>and the same goal.</i> <i>To fight the airport.</i> 392 00:41:26,517 --> 00:41:30,317 <i>Just one thing has been added.</i> <i>The airport itself.</i> 393 00:41:30,521 --> 00:41:32,785 <i>But its single runway</i> <i>hemmed in by barbed wire</i> 394 00:41:32,990 --> 00:41:35,481 <i>looks more besieged</i> <i>than victorious.</i> 395 00:41:52,309 --> 00:41:56,837 <i>My pal Hayao Yamaneko</i> <i>has found a solution.</i> 396 00:41:57,047 --> 00:42:00,608 <i>If the images of the present don't change,</i> <i>change the images of the past.</i> 397 00:42:01,218 --> 00:42:04,813 <i>He showed me clashes of the '60s</i> <i>run through his synthesizer.</i> 398 00:42:05,556 --> 00:42:08,582 <i>'Less deceptive pictures, 'he says,</i> <i>with the conviction of a fanatic,</i> 399 00:42:08,792 --> 00:42:10,885 <i>than those you see on television. ' 400 00:42:11,095 --> 00:42:14,087 <i>At least they proclaim themselves</i> <i>to be what they are. Images - 401 00:42:14,298 --> 00:42:18,826 <i>not the portable and compact form</i> <i>of an already inaccessible reality.</i> 402 00:42:21,171 --> 00:42:26,404 <i>Hayao calls his machine's world</i> <i>'the Zone, 'in an homage to Tarkovsky.</i> 403 00:43:15,859 --> 00:43:19,818 <i>What Narita brought back to me</i> <i>like a shattered hologram</i> 404 00:43:20,030 --> 00:43:22,191 <i>was a fragment</i> <i>of the '60s generation.</i> 405 00:43:24,568 --> 00:43:28,004 <i>If to love without illusions is still</i> <i>to love, I can say that I loved it.</i> 406 00:43:28,505 --> 00:43:30,302 <i>It was a generation</i> <i>that often exasperated me,</i> 407 00:43:30,507 --> 00:43:33,271 <i>for I didn't share its utopian goal</i> <i>of uniting in a common struggle</i> 408 00:43:33,477 --> 00:43:37,345 <i>those who revolt against poverty</i> <i>and those who revolt against wealth,</i> 409 00:43:37,548 --> 00:43:42,485 <i>but it let out a primordial scream that</i> <i>better-adjusted voices no longer could.</i> 410 00:43:50,160 --> 00:43:53,186 <i>I met peasants there who'd come</i> <i>to know themselves through the struggle.</i> 411 00:43:53,397 --> 00:43:55,365 <i>In concrete terms, it had failed.</i> 412 00:43:55,566 --> 00:43:58,034 <i>Yet all they had won</i> <i>in their understanding of the world</i> 413 00:43:58,235 --> 00:44:00,100 <i>and of themselves</i> 414 00:44:00,304 --> 00:44:03,432 <i>could only have been won</i> <i>through the struggle.</i> 415 00:44:04,108 --> 00:44:07,839 <i>As for the students, some massacred</i> <i>each other in the mountains</i> 416 00:44:08,045 --> 00:44:09,945 <i>in the name</i> <i>of revolutionary purity,</i> 417 00:44:10,147 --> 00:44:12,809 <i>while others had studied capitalism</i> <i>so thoroughly to fight it</i> 418 00:44:13,117 --> 00:44:15,915 <i>that they now provide it</i> <i>with its best executives.</i> 419 00:44:16,120 --> 00:44:19,214 <i>Like everywhere else, the movement</i> <i>had its posturers and its careerists - 420 00:44:19,423 --> 00:44:22,688 <i>including those who made</i> <i>a career of martyrdom - 421 00:44:22,893 --> 00:44:25,521 <i>but it carried with it all those</i> <i>who said, like Che Guevara,</i> 422 00:44:25,729 --> 00:44:29,688 <i>that they 'trembled with indignation</i> <i>at every injustice committed in the world. ' 423 00:44:30,567 --> 00:44:33,297 <i>They wanted to give</i> <i>a political meaning to their generosity,</i> 424 00:44:33,504 --> 00:44:36,769 <i>and their generosity</i> <i>has outlasted their politics.</i> 425 00:44:36,974 --> 00:44:42,412 <i>That's why I will never allow it to be</i> <i>said that youth is wasted on the young. " 426 00:45:00,030 --> 00:45:02,555 <i>"The youth who gather</i> <i>every weekend at Shinjuku</i> 427 00:45:02,766 --> 00:45:05,860 <i>obviously know they're not</i> <i>on a launching pad toward real life,</i> 428 00:45:06,070 --> 00:45:08,732 <i>that they are life, to be eaten</i> <i>on the spot, like fresh donuts.</i> 429 00:45:10,774 --> 00:45:12,241 <i>It's a very simple secret.</i> 430 00:45:12,443 --> 00:45:15,810 <i>The old try to hide it,</i> <i>and not all the young know it.</i> 431 00:45:16,013 --> 00:45:18,345 <i>The 10-year-old girl</i> <i>who tied her friend's hands</i> 432 00:45:18,549 --> 00:45:20,744 <i>and threw her</i> <i>from the 13th floor</i> 433 00:45:20,951 --> 00:45:24,148 <i>for speaking badly of their class team</i> <i>hadn't discovered it yet.</i> 434 00:45:24,354 --> 00:45:27,289 <i>Parents who demand</i> <i>more special telephone lines</i> 435 00:45:27,491 --> 00:45:29,220 <i>to prevent children's suicides</i> 436 00:45:29,426 --> 00:45:33,157 <i>find out a little late</i> <i>that they kept the secret too well.</i> 437 00:45:34,398 --> 00:45:37,959 <i>Rock is an international language</i> <i>for spreading the secret.</i> 438 00:45:38,635 --> 00:45:41,365 <i>Another is peculiar to Tokyo.</i> 439 00:45:49,480 --> 00:45:52,813 <i>For the Takenoko,</i> <i>20 is retiring age.</i> 440 00:45:53,016 --> 00:45:54,643 <i>They are baby Martians.</i> 441 00:45:54,852 --> 00:45:58,219 <i>I go see them dance</i> <i>every Sunday in Yoyogi Park.</i> 442 00:45:58,689 --> 00:46:02,819 <i>They want people to look at them</i> <i>but seem not to notice when they do.</i> 443 00:46:03,026 --> 00:46:04,618 <i>They live</i> <i>in a parallel time stream.</i> 444 00:46:04,828 --> 00:46:07,922 <i>An invisible aquarium wall</i> <i>separates them from their audience,</i> 445 00:46:08,132 --> 00:46:10,100 <i>and I can spend a whole afternoon</i> 446 00:46:10,300 --> 00:46:14,964 <i>watching a little Takenoko girl</i> <i>learn the customs of her planet.</i> 447 00:46:28,752 --> 00:46:30,879 <i>Beyond that,</i> <i>they wear dog tags,</i> 448 00:46:31,088 --> 00:46:33,852 <i>they obey a whistle,</i> <i>the Mafia extorts money from them,</i> 449 00:46:34,057 --> 00:46:36,355 <i>and with the exception</i> <i>of a single all-girl group,</i> 450 00:46:36,560 --> 00:46:38,960 <i>a boy is always in charge. " 451 00:47:37,221 --> 00:47:39,189 <i>One day he writes to me,</i> 452 00:47:39,389 --> 00:47:41,118 <i>"Description of a dream.</i> 453 00:47:41,325 --> 00:47:43,350 <i>More and more,</i> <i>my dreams are set</i> 454 00:47:43,560 --> 00:47:45,323 <i>in the department stores of Tokyo,</i> 455 00:47:45,529 --> 00:47:47,929 <i>the subterranean passages</i> <i>that parallel the city above.</i> 456 00:47:49,833 --> 00:47:53,530 <i>A face appears, then disappears.</i> <i>A trace is found, then lost.</i> 457 00:47:53,737 --> 00:47:56,865 <i>The folklore of dreams is so much intact</i> <i>that the next day, when I'm awake,</i> 458 00:47:57,074 --> 00:47:59,941 <i>I realize that I continue to seek</i> <i>in this basement labyrinth</i> 459 00:48:00,143 --> 00:48:03,374 <i>the presence concealed</i> <i>the night before.</i> 460 00:48:03,881 --> 00:48:06,281 <i>I begin to wonder</i> <i>if those dreams are really mine,</i> 461 00:48:06,483 --> 00:48:10,442 <i>or if they're part of a totality,</i> <i>a gigantic collective dream,</i> 462 00:48:10,654 --> 00:48:13,782 <i>of which the entire city</i> <i>may be the projection.</i> 463 00:48:14,124 --> 00:48:17,059 <i>It might suffice to pick up</i> <i>any of the telephones lying around</i> 464 00:48:17,261 --> 00:48:18,956 <i>to hear a familiar voice</i> 465 00:48:19,696 --> 00:48:22,631 <i>or the beating of a heart - 466 00:48:23,100 --> 00:48:25,762 <i>Sei Shonagon's, for example.</i> 467 00:48:26,336 --> 00:48:28,304 <i>All the underground passages</i> <i>lead to train stations.</i> 468 00:48:28,505 --> 00:48:31,633 <i>The same companies own the stores</i> <i>and the railroads that bear their name - 469 00:48:31,842 --> 00:48:34,936 <i>Keio, Odakyu,</i> <i>all those names of ports.</i> 470 00:48:35,145 --> 00:48:38,273 <i>The train inhabited by sleeping people</i> <i>assembles all the fragments of dreams</i> 471 00:48:38,482 --> 00:48:41,815 <i>and makes a single film of them,</i> <i>the ultimate film.</i> 472 00:48:42,052 --> 00:48:45,180 <i>The tickets from the automatic dispenser</i> <i>grant admission to the show. " 473 00:53:50,994 --> 00:53:54,521 <i>He told me of the January light</i> <i>on the stations' stairways.</i> 474 00:53:55,098 --> 00:53:58,329 <i>He said the city ought to be</i> <i>deciphered like a musical score.</i> 475 00:53:59,803 --> 00:54:04,263 <i>One could get lost in the great orchestral</i> <i>masses and the accumulation of details,</i> 476 00:54:04,474 --> 00:54:06,635 <i>but that yielded</i> <i>the cheapest image of Tokyo.</i> 477 00:54:06,843 --> 00:54:09,505 <i>Overcrowded,</i> <i>megalomaniac, inhuman.</i> 478 00:54:09,713 --> 00:54:12,147 <i>He thought he saw</i> <i>more subtle cycles there.</i> 479 00:54:12,349 --> 00:54:15,011 <i>Rhythms, clusters of faces</i> <i>glimpsed in passing,</i> 480 00:54:15,218 --> 00:54:18,881 <i>as different and precise</i> <i>as groups of instruments.</i> 481 00:54:19,322 --> 00:54:22,291 <i>Sometimes the musical comparison</i> <i>coincided with plain reality.</i> 482 00:54:22,492 --> 00:54:26,326 <i>The Sony stairway in the Ginza</i> <i>was itself a musical instrument,</i> 483 00:54:26,529 --> 00:54:28,759 <i>each step a note.</i> 484 00:54:28,965 --> 00:54:31,763 <i>It all fit together like voices</i> <i>in a complicated fugue,</i> 485 00:54:31,968 --> 00:54:34,937 <i>but it was enough to seize</i> <i>one of them and hang on to it.</i> 486 00:54:35,138 --> 00:54:37,629 <i>The television screens,</i> <i>for example.</i> 487 00:54:37,841 --> 00:54:39,638 <i>All by themselves</i> <i>they created an itinerary</i> 488 00:54:39,843 --> 00:54:42,778 <i>that sometimes</i> <i>took unexpected turns.</i> 489 00:54:42,979 --> 00:54:44,446 <i>It was sumo season,</i> 490 00:54:44,648 --> 00:54:47,981 <i>and the fans watching the fights</i> <i>in the very chic Ginza showrooms</i> 491 00:54:48,184 --> 00:54:50,846 <i>were the poorest</i> <i>of the Tokyo poor,</i> 492 00:54:51,054 --> 00:54:53,545 <i>so poor that they didn't have</i> <i>even a TVset.</i> 493 00:54:53,757 --> 00:54:56,658 <i>He saw them come,</i> <i>these lost souls of Namidabashi</i> 494 00:54:56,860 --> 00:54:59,954 <i>with whom he'd drunk sake</i> <i>one sunny dawn.</i> 495 00:55:00,330 --> 00:55:03,163 <i>How many seasons ago</i> <i>was that now?</i> 496 00:56:33,656 --> 00:56:35,590 <i>He wrote me...</i> 497 00:56:36,826 --> 00:56:39,124 <i>"Even in the stalls</i> <i>selling spare electronic parts</i> 498 00:56:39,329 --> 00:56:42,025 <i>that some hipsters</i> <i>use for jewelry,</i> 499 00:56:42,232 --> 00:56:45,360 <i>there is, in Tokyo's musical score,</i> <i>a particular staff</i> 500 00:56:45,568 --> 00:56:49,026 <i>whose rarity in Europe condemns me</i> <i>to a real acoustic exile.</i> 501 00:56:49,239 --> 00:56:51,833 <i>The music of video games.</i> 502 00:56:52,342 --> 00:56:54,401 <i>They're built into tables.</i> 503 00:56:54,611 --> 00:56:57,512 <i>You can drink and have lunch</i> <i>and go on playing.</i> 504 00:56:57,781 --> 00:56:59,681 <i>The arcades open onto the street,</i> 505 00:56:59,883 --> 00:57:02,477 <i>where you can listen</i> <i>and play from memory.</i> 506 00:57:31,247 --> 00:57:33,715 <i>I witnessed the birth</i> <i>of these games in Japan.</i> 507 00:57:33,917 --> 00:57:37,717 <i>I met them again later all over the world,</i> <i>but one detail was different.</i> 508 00:57:37,921 --> 00:57:39,684 <i>At first it was the familiar game,</i> 509 00:57:39,889 --> 00:57:43,381 <i>a politically incorrect battering</i> <i>aimed at killing off creatures</i> 510 00:57:43,593 --> 00:57:48,292 <i>that were either prairie dogs</i> <i>or baby seals - I can't be sure which.</i> 511 00:57:49,365 --> 00:57:52,129 <i>Here's the new Japanese variation.</i> 512 00:57:52,335 --> 00:57:56,396 <i>Instead of the critters, there are</i> <i>vaguely human heads identified by labels.</i> 513 00:57:56,606 --> 00:57:59,234 <i>At the top,</i> <i>the chairman of the board.</i> 514 00:57:59,609 --> 00:58:02,703 <i>In front of him,</i> <i>the vice president and directors.</i> 515 00:58:03,413 --> 00:58:06,576 <i>In the front row, department heads</i> <i>and personnel manager.</i> 516 00:58:07,116 --> 00:58:09,084 <i>The guy I filmed,</i> 517 00:58:09,285 --> 00:58:11,913 <i>who was smashing up</i> <i>the hierarchy with enviable energy,</i> 518 00:58:12,121 --> 00:58:14,612 <i>confided that it was</i> <i>not at all allegorical for him,</i> 519 00:58:14,824 --> 00:58:17,384 <i>that he was thinking</i> <i>very specifically of his superiors.</i> 520 00:58:17,594 --> 00:58:19,824 <i>That's no doubt why</i> <i>the 'personnel manager'</i> 521 00:58:20,029 --> 00:58:24,227 <i>has been clubbed so often and so hard</i> <i>that it was taken out of commission</i> 522 00:58:24,434 --> 00:58:28,063 <i>and a baby seal</i> <i>reinserted in its place.</i> 523 00:58:32,942 --> 00:58:35,308 <i>Hayao Yamaneko invents</i> <i>video games with his machine.</i> 524 00:58:36,813 --> 00:58:40,078 <i>To please me, he puts in</i> <i>my most beloved animals,</i> 525 00:58:40,283 --> 00:58:42,376 <i>the cat and the owl.</i> 526 00:58:48,958 --> 00:58:51,017 <i>He claims</i> <i>that only electronics</i> 527 00:58:51,227 --> 00:58:55,687 <i>can deal with feeling,</i> <i>memory and imagination.</i> 528 00:58:57,066 --> 00:58:59,330 <i>Mizoguchi's Ars�ne Lupin,</i> <i>for example,</i> 529 00:58:59,536 --> 00:59:02,437 <i>or the no-less-imaginary</i> <i>Burakumin.</i> 530 00:59:03,139 --> 00:59:07,599 <i>How to show a category</i> <i>of Japanese that doesn't exist?</i> 531 00:59:07,944 --> 00:59:12,313 <i>Yes, I saw them in Osaka, for hire</i> <i>by the day, sleeping on the ground.</i> 532 00:59:12,515 --> 00:59:15,575 <i>Since the Middle Ages they've been</i> <i>doomed to grubby and thankless jobs,</i> 533 00:59:15,785 --> 00:59:19,084 <i>but since the Meiji era,</i> <i>officially nothing sets them apart,</i> 534 00:59:19,289 --> 00:59:23,658 <i>and their real name - the</i> eta - <i>is a taboo word, not to be pronounced.</i> 535 00:59:24,994 --> 00:59:26,621 <i>They are non-persons.</i> 536 00:59:26,829 --> 00:59:29,662 <i>How can they be shown,</i> <i>except as non-images?</i> 537 00:59:38,908 --> 00:59:43,277 <i>Video games are the first stage in a plan</i> <i>for machines to help the human race,</i> 538 00:59:43,479 --> 00:59:46,039 <i>the only plan that offers</i> <i>a future for intelligence.</i> 539 00:59:47,350 --> 00:59:50,513 <i>For the moment, the unsurpassable</i> <i>philosophy of our time</i> 540 00:59:50,720 --> 00:59:52,688 <i>is found in Pac-Man.</i> 541 00:59:53,623 --> 00:59:56,251 <i>I didn't know, while sacrificing</i> <i>my 100-yen coins to him,</i> 542 00:59:56,459 --> 00:59:58,654 <i>that he was</i> <i>to conquer the world.</i> 543 00:59:58,861 --> 01:00:02,558 <i>Perhaps because he's the most perfect</i> <i>graphic metaphor of the human condition.</i> 544 01:00:02,765 --> 01:00:04,665 <i>He puts into true perspective</i> 545 01:00:04,867 --> 01:00:07,131 <i>the balance of power between</i> <i>the individual and the environment,</i> 546 01:00:07,337 --> 01:00:09,464 <i>and he tells us soberly</i> <i>that though there's honor</i> 547 01:00:09,672 --> 01:00:11,936 <i>in carrying out the greatest number</i> <i>of victorious attacks,</i> 548 01:00:12,141 --> 01:00:15,110 <i>it never amounts</i> <i>to anything in the end. " 549 01:00:58,054 --> 01:01:00,284 <i>He was pleased to see</i> <i>the same chrysanthemums</i> 550 01:01:00,490 --> 01:01:03,186 <i>at funerals</i> <i>for both men and animals.</i> 551 01:01:03,393 --> 01:01:06,385 <i>He described the ceremony</i> <i>held at the zoo in Ueno,</i> 552 01:01:06,596 --> 01:01:08,791 <i>in memory of animals</i> <i>that had died during the year.</i> 553 01:01:09,465 --> 01:01:10,932 <i>"For two years now,</i> 554 01:01:11,134 --> 01:01:14,365 <i>a certain panda's death has rendered</i> <i>this day even more sorrowful,</i> 555 01:01:14,570 --> 01:01:16,470 <i>a loss more irreparable,</i> <i>say the newspapers,</i> 556 01:01:16,673 --> 01:01:18,436 <i>than the recent death</i> <i>of the prime minister.</i> 557 01:01:18,641 --> 01:01:20,438 <i>Last year people really cried.</i> 558 01:01:20,643 --> 01:01:22,406 <i>Now they seem to be</i> <i>getting used to it,</i> 559 01:01:22,612 --> 01:01:24,580 <i>accepting that each year</i> <i>death takes a panda</i> 560 01:01:24,781 --> 01:01:27,682 <i>as dragons carry off young girls</i> <i>in fairy tales.</i> 561 01:01:30,019 --> 01:01:32,146 <i>I've heard this sentence.</i> 562 01:01:33,756 --> 01:01:35,587 <i>'The partition separating</i> <i>life from death</i> 563 01:01:35,792 --> 01:01:39,421 <i>doesn't seem as thick to us</i> <i>as it does to a Westerner. ' 564 01:01:41,731 --> 01:01:45,633 <i>What I've read most often in the eyes</i> <i>of people about to die is surprise.</i> 565 01:01:46,369 --> 01:01:50,328 <i>What I read right now in the eyes</i> <i>of Japanese children is curiosity,</i> 566 01:01:50,540 --> 01:01:54,499 <i>as if they were trying</i> <i>to see through the partition</i> 567 01:01:54,711 --> 01:01:56,679 <i>to understand an animal's death. " 568 01:03:19,996 --> 01:03:21,827 <i>"I've returned from a country</i> 569 01:03:22,031 --> 01:03:25,797 <i>where death is not a partition to cross</i> <i>but a road to follow.</i> 570 01:03:26,435 --> 01:03:28,926 <i>The Great Ancestor</i> <i>of the Bijago archipelago</i> 571 01:03:29,138 --> 01:03:31,072 <i>has described for us</i> <i>the itinerary of the dead,</i> 572 01:03:31,274 --> 01:03:35,404 <i>and how they move from island to island</i> <i>according to a rigorous protocol,</i> 573 01:03:35,611 --> 01:03:40,514 <i>until they come to the last beach, where</i> <i>they wait for the ship to the other world.</i> 574 01:03:42,585 --> 01:03:46,077 <i>If by accident one should meet them,</i> <i>it is imperative not to recognize them.</i> 575 01:03:49,559 --> 01:03:52,357 <i>The Bijagos</i> <i>are part of Guinea-Bissau.</i> 576 01:03:52,562 --> 01:03:56,464 <i>In an old film clip, Amilcar Cabral</i> <i>waves good-bye to the shore.</i> 577 01:03:56,666 --> 01:03:59,794 <i>He's right.</i> <i>He'll never see it again.</i> 578 01:04:00,169 --> 01:04:02,603 <i>Luis Cabral made</i> <i>the same gesture 15 years later,</i> 579 01:04:02,805 --> 01:04:05,330 <i>on the canoe</i> <i>that was bringing us back.</i> 580 01:04:05,541 --> 01:04:09,978 <i>Guinea had by that time become a nation,</i> <i>and Luis was its president.</i> 581 01:04:10,580 --> 01:04:13,481 <i>All those who remember the war</i> <i>remember him.</i> 582 01:04:13,716 --> 01:04:18,346 <i>Like his half brother Amilcar, he was of</i> <i>mixed Guinean and Cape Verdian blood,</i> 583 01:04:18,554 --> 01:04:22,923 <i>and, like Amilcar, a founding member</i> <i>of an unusual party, the PAIGC,</i> 584 01:04:23,125 --> 01:04:25,821 <i>which, by uniting the two colonized</i> <i>countries in a single struggle,</i> 585 01:04:26,028 --> 01:04:29,486 <i>sought to herald</i> <i>a federation of the two states.</i> 586 01:04:30,466 --> 01:04:32,798 <i>I've heard the stories</i> <i>of former guerrilla fighters,</i> 587 01:04:33,002 --> 01:04:36,870 <i>who'd fought in conditions so inhuman</i> <i>that they pitied the Portuguese soldiers</i> 588 01:04:37,073 --> 01:04:39,268 <i>for having to bear what</i> <i>they themselves suffered.</i> 589 01:04:39,475 --> 01:04:41,966 <i>I heard that</i> <i>and many more things</i> 590 01:04:42,178 --> 01:04:45,978 <i>that make one ashamed for having used</i> <i>lightly, even if inadvertently,</i> 591 01:04:46,182 --> 01:04:49,618 <i>the word "guerrilla" to describe</i> <i>a certain kind of filmmaking,</i> 592 01:04:49,819 --> 01:04:52,185 <i>a word linked at the time</i> <i>to many theoretical debates</i> 593 01:04:52,388 --> 01:04:54,948 <i>as well as bloody defeats</i> <i>on the ground.</i> 594 01:04:55,157 --> 01:04:58,092 <i>Amilcar Cabral was the only one</i> <i>to lead a victorious guerrilla war,</i> 595 01:04:58,294 --> 01:05:00,660 <i>and not only in terms</i> <i>of military conquests.</i> 596 01:05:00,863 --> 01:05:03,263 <i>He knew his people.</i> <i>He'd studied them at length.</i> 597 01:05:03,466 --> 01:05:06,993 <i>He wanted every liberated region</i> <i>to herald a different kind of society.</i> 598 01:05:07,203 --> 01:05:09,797 <i>The socialist countries send</i> <i>weapons to arm the fighters.</i> 599 01:05:10,006 --> 01:05:13,134 <i>The social democracies</i> <i>fill the people's stores.</i> 600 01:05:13,342 --> 01:05:15,776 <i>May the extreme Left</i> <i>forgive history,</i> 601 01:05:15,978 --> 01:05:20,779 <i>but if the guerrillas are like fish</i> <i>in water, it's a bit thanks to Sweden.</i> 602 01:05:20,983 --> 01:05:24,475 <i>Amilcar was not afraid of ambiguities.</i> <i>He knew the traps.</i> 603 01:05:24,687 --> 01:05:30,125 <i>He wrote, "It's as though</i> <i>we're facing a raging river,</i> 604 01:05:30,326 --> 01:05:32,317 <i>and those trying</i> <i>to cross are drowning.</i> 605 01:05:32,528 --> 01:05:35,224 <i>But there's no choice.</i> <i>They must get to the other side. " 606 01:05:54,550 --> 01:05:58,213 <i>Now the scene moves to Cassaca,</i> <i>February 17th, 1980,</i> 607 01:05:58,421 --> 01:06:01,652 <i>but to grasp it properly,</i> <i>one must move forward in time.</i> 608 01:06:01,857 --> 01:06:05,020 <i>In a year, Luis Cabral,</i> <i>the president, will be in prison,</i> 609 01:06:05,227 --> 01:06:08,594 <i>and the weeping man</i> <i>he has just decorated, Major Nino,</i> 610 01:06:08,798 --> 01:06:10,595 <i>will have taken power.</i> 611 01:06:10,967 --> 01:06:12,696 <i>The party will have split.</i> 612 01:06:12,902 --> 01:06:16,497 <i>Guineans and Capeverdians</i> <i>will be fighting over Amilcar's legacy.</i> 613 01:06:16,706 --> 01:06:19,334 <i>We'll see that beneath</i> <i>this ceremony of promotions,</i> 614 01:06:19,542 --> 01:06:22,534 <i>seemingly perpetuating</i> <i>the brotherhood of the struggle,</i> 615 01:06:22,745 --> 01:06:25,612 <i>there lay a pit</i> <i>of post-victory bitterness,</i> 616 01:06:25,815 --> 01:06:28,943 <i>and that Nino's tears expressed</i> <i>not an ex-warrior's emotion</i> 617 01:06:29,151 --> 01:06:31,016 <i>but the wounded pride of a hero</i> 618 01:06:31,220 --> 01:06:34,121 <i>slighted at not being raised</i> <i>high enough above the rest.</i> 619 01:06:36,359 --> 01:06:39,294 <i>Beneath each of these faces</i> <i>lies a memory,</i> 620 01:06:39,495 --> 01:06:42,623 <i>and where there was to be</i> <i>one collective memory,</i> 621 01:06:42,932 --> 01:06:46,527 <i>there are a thousand memories of men</i> <i>who parade their personal wounds</i> 622 01:06:46,736 --> 01:06:48,533 <i>in the great wound of history.</i> 623 01:06:49,839 --> 01:06:53,900 <i>In Portugal, swept up in turn</i> <i>by the breaking wave of Bissau,</i> 624 01:06:54,110 --> 01:06:57,910 <i>Miguel Torga, who'd struggled all his</i> <i>life against the dictatorship, wrote,</i> 625 01:06:58,114 --> 01:07:01,572 <i>'Every bit player</i> <i>represents only himself.</i> 626 01:07:01,984 --> 01:07:04,179 <i>Instead of seeking social change,</i> 627 01:07:04,387 --> 01:07:09,825 <i>he seeks simply, in the revolutionary act,</i> <i>to boost his own image. ' 628 01:07:12,194 --> 01:07:14,924 <i>That's the way</i> <i>the breakers recede,</i> 629 01:07:15,131 --> 01:07:19,261 <i>and so predictably that one must believe</i> <i>in an 'amnesia of the future'</i> 630 01:07:19,468 --> 01:07:22,631 <i>that history bestows,</i> <i>out of mercy or self-interest,</i> 631 01:07:22,838 --> 01:07:24,965 <i>on those whom it recruits.</i> 632 01:07:25,307 --> 01:07:28,799 <i>Amilcar murdered</i> <i>by members of his own party,</i> 633 01:07:29,011 --> 01:07:32,174 <i>the liberated areas</i> <i>fallen to bloody petty tyrants,</i> 634 01:07:32,381 --> 01:07:34,645 <i>liquidated in their turn</i> <i>by a central power</i> 635 01:07:34,850 --> 01:07:38,411 <i>to whose stability everyone</i> <i>paid homage until the military coup - 636 01:07:38,621 --> 01:07:40,953 <i>that's how history advances,</i> 637 01:07:41,157 --> 01:07:44,217 <i>plugging its memory</i> <i>like one plugs one's ears.</i> 638 01:07:44,427 --> 01:07:46,190 <i>Luis, exiled to Cuba,</i> 639 01:07:46,395 --> 01:07:49,057 <i>and Nino,</i> <i>himself a target of later plots,</i> 640 01:07:49,265 --> 01:07:53,065 <i>can summon each other endlessly</i> <i>before history's court - 641 01:07:53,269 --> 01:07:55,294 <i>but history doesn't care.</i> 642 01:07:55,504 --> 01:07:58,735 <i>It has only one friend,</i> <i>the one Brando spoke of in</i> Apocalypse: 643 01:07:59,241 --> 01:08:02,039 <i>The horror that has a name</i> <i>and a face.</i> 644 01:08:04,513 --> 01:08:08,711 <i>I'm writing you all this from another world,</i> <i>a world of appearances.</i> 645 01:08:09,185 --> 01:08:12,279 <i>In a way, the two worlds</i> <i>communicate with each other.</i> 646 01:08:12,488 --> 01:08:15,218 <i>Memory is to one</i> <i>what history is to the other.</i> 647 01:08:15,424 --> 01:08:17,392 <i>An impossibility.</i> 648 01:08:17,860 --> 01:08:20,954 <i>Legends are born of the need</i> <i>to decipher the indecipherable.</i> 649 01:08:21,163 --> 01:08:23,859 <i>Memories must make do</i> <i>with their delirium, with their drift.</i> 650 01:08:26,735 --> 01:08:28,635 <i>A moment stopped would burn</i> 651 01:08:28,838 --> 01:08:32,035 <i>like a frame of film caught</i> <i>in the furnace of the projector.</i> 652 01:08:32,241 --> 01:08:35,108 <i>Madness protects,</i> <i>as fever does.</i> 653 01:08:37,012 --> 01:08:39,412 <i>I envy Hayao and his Zone.</i> 654 01:08:39,615 --> 01:08:41,981 <i>He plays</i> <i>with the signs of his memory.</i> 655 01:08:42,184 --> 01:08:44,345 <i>He pins them down</i> <i>and decorates them like insects</i> 656 01:08:44,553 --> 01:08:46,316 <i>that have flown beyond time</i> 657 01:08:46,522 --> 01:08:50,083 <i>and that he can contemplate</i> <i>from a point outside of time - 658 01:08:50,326 --> 01:08:52,920 <i>the only eternity we have left.</i> 659 01:08:53,929 --> 01:08:55,897 <i>I look at his machines.</i> 660 01:08:56,098 --> 01:09:00,262 <i>I think of a world where each memory</i> <i>could create its own legend. " 661 01:10:04,333 --> 01:10:06,494 <i>He wrote that only one film</i> <i>had been capable</i> 662 01:10:06,702 --> 01:10:08,966 <i>of portraying impossible memory,</i> <i>insane memory.</i> 663 01:10:09,171 --> 01:10:12,038 <i>Alfred Hitchcock's</i> Vertigo. 664 01:10:13,976 --> 01:10:15,637 <i>In the spiral</i> <i>of the opening titles,</i> 665 01:10:15,844 --> 01:10:19,610 <i>he saw time covering a field</i> <i>growing ever wider as it moved away,</i> 666 01:10:19,815 --> 01:10:24,275 <i>a cyclone whose present moment</i> <i>contains the motionless eye.</i> 667 01:10:25,588 --> 01:10:29,615 <i>In San Francisco he'd gone</i> <i>on a pilgrimage to all the film's locations.</i> 668 01:10:30,192 --> 01:10:35,459 <i>The florist Podesta Baldocchi,</i> <i>where James Stewart spies on Kim Novak,</i> 669 01:10:35,664 --> 01:10:37,632 <i>he the hunter</i> <i>and she the prey - 670 01:10:37,833 --> 01:10:40,131 <i>or was it the other way around?</i> 671 01:10:40,536 --> 01:10:43,403 <i>The tile floor hadn't changed.</i> 672 01:10:43,772 --> 01:10:46,434 <i>He'd driven up and down the hills</i> <i>of San Francisco,</i> 673 01:10:46,642 --> 01:10:50,305 <i>where Jimmy Stewart - Scottie - <i>follows Kim Novak- Madeleine.</i> 674 01:10:53,349 --> 01:10:56,443 <i>It seems to be about pursuit,</i> <i>mystery and murder,</i> 675 01:10:56,652 --> 01:10:58,984 <i>but in truth</i> <i>it's about power and freedom,</i> 676 01:10:59,188 --> 01:11:01,486 <i>melancholy and dazzlement,</i> 677 01:11:01,690 --> 01:11:05,786 <i>so carefully coded within the spiral</i> <i>that you could miss it</i> 678 01:11:05,995 --> 01:11:08,361 <i>and not immediately notice</i> <i>that this vertigo of space</i> 679 01:11:08,564 --> 01:11:11,533 <i>in reality stands</i> <i>for the vertigo of time.</i> 680 01:11:13,269 --> 01:11:15,169 <i>He'd followed every trail,</i> 681 01:11:15,371 --> 01:11:17,339 <i>even to the cemetery</i> <i>at Mission Dolores,</i> 682 01:11:17,539 --> 01:11:20,940 <i>where Madeleine prayed at the grave</i> <i>of a woman long dead</i> 683 01:11:21,143 --> 01:11:23,611 <i>whom she should not</i> <i>have known.</i> 684 01:11:23,979 --> 01:11:26,447 <i>He'd followed Madeleine - <i>as Scottie had done - 685 01:11:26,649 --> 01:11:28,480 <i>to the Museum</i> <i>of the Legion of Honor,</i> 686 01:11:28,684 --> 01:11:31,744 <i>before the portrait of a dead woman</i> <i>she shouldn't have known.</i> 687 01:11:31,954 --> 01:11:34,514 <i>And on the portrait,</i> <i>as in Madeleine's hair,</i> 688 01:11:34,723 --> 01:11:36,691 <i>the spiral of time.</i> 689 01:11:44,733 --> 01:11:48,999 <i>The Victorian hotel where Madeleine</i> <i>disappeared had itself disappeared.</i> 690 01:11:49,204 --> 01:11:52,731 <i>Concrete had replaced it</i> <i>at the corner of Eddie and Gough.</i> 691 01:11:52,941 --> 01:11:57,640 <i>But the cross-section of redwood trunk</i> <i>was still in Muir Woods.</i> 692 01:11:57,913 --> 01:11:59,881 <i>On it, Madeleine traced</i> <i>the short distance</i> 693 01:12:00,082 --> 01:12:04,314 <i>between two of those concentric lines</i> <i>that measure the age of the tree and said,</i> 694 01:12:04,520 --> 01:12:07,216 <i>"Here I was born,</i> <i>and there I died. " 695 01:12:08,424 --> 01:12:11,359 <i>He remembered another film</i> <i>in which this passage was quoted.</i> 696 01:12:11,860 --> 01:12:14,761 <i>The redwood was</i> <i>in the Jardin des Plantes in Paris,</i> 697 01:12:14,963 --> 01:12:20,424 <i>and the hand pointed to a place</i> <i>beyond the tree - outside of time.</i> 698 01:12:23,238 --> 01:12:25,570 <i>This painted horse</i> <i>at San Juan Bautista,</i> 699 01:12:25,774 --> 01:12:28,334 <i>with an eye</i> <i>that looked like Madeleine's - 700 01:12:28,544 --> 01:12:31,775 <i>Hitchcock had invented nothing.</i> <i>It was all there.</i> 701 01:12:32,448 --> 01:12:34,382 <i>He'd run under the arches</i> <i>in the mission</i> 702 01:12:34,583 --> 01:12:36,608 <i>as Madeleine had run</i> <i>towards her death - 703 01:12:36,819 --> 01:12:39,379 <i>but was it really hers?</i> 704 01:12:41,724 --> 01:12:44,693 <i>From this fake tower-</i> <i>the only thing Hitchcock added-</i> 705 01:12:44,893 --> 01:12:47,726 <i>he imagined Scottie</i> <i>as "Time's Fool of Love,"</i> 706 01:12:48,097 --> 01:12:52,591 <i>unable to live with memory</i> <i>without falsifying it,</i> 707 01:12:52,801 --> 01:12:55,827 <i>inventing a double for Madeleine</i> <i>in another dimension of time,</i> 708 01:12:56,038 --> 01:12:58,871 <i>a Zone that would belong</i> <i>only to him,</i> 709 01:12:59,074 --> 01:13:01,702 <i>from which he could decipher</i> <i>the undecipherable story</i> 710 01:13:01,910 --> 01:13:05,471 <i>begun under the Golden Gate when he</i> <i>pulled Madeleine out of San Francisco Bay,</i> 711 01:13:05,681 --> 01:13:08,616 <i>when he'd saved her from death</i> <i>before casting her back to death - 712 01:13:08,817 --> 01:13:11,547 <i>or was it the other way around?</i> 713 01:13:27,636 --> 01:13:31,629 <i>"In San Francisco I made the pilgrimage</i> <i>of a film I'd seen 19 times.</i> 714 01:13:32,174 --> 01:13:35,803 <i>In Iceland, I laid the first stone</i> <i>of an imaginary film.</i> 715 01:13:36,011 --> 01:13:38,673 <i>That summer,</i> <i>I'd met three children on a road,</i> 716 01:13:38,881 --> 01:13:41,042 <i>and a volcano had risen up</i> <i>out of the sea - 717 01:13:41,250 --> 01:13:43,684 <i>the Set Designer</i> <i>at work once again.</i> 718 01:13:45,053 --> 01:13:49,456 <i>American astronauts trained in this lunar</i> <i>landscape before flying to the moon.</i> 719 01:13:49,658 --> 01:13:51,626 <i>I immediately saw it as a setting</i> <i>for science fiction,</i> 720 01:13:51,827 --> 01:13:53,488 <i>the landscape of another planet - 721 01:13:53,695 --> 01:13:58,325 <i>No, let it be our own for someone</i> <i>who comes from very far away.</i> 722 01:13:59,368 --> 01:14:02,303 <i>I imagine him lumbering about</i> <i>like a deep-sea diver</i> 723 01:14:02,504 --> 01:14:04,768 <i>in this volcanic soil</i> <i>that sticks to the soles.</i> 724 01:14:04,973 --> 01:14:08,875 <i>All of a sudden he stumbles,</i> <i>and with the next step it's a year later.</i> 725 01:14:09,077 --> 01:14:12,046 <i>He's walking on a small path</i> <i>near the Dutch border,</i> 726 01:14:12,247 --> 01:14:14,977 <i>along a seabird sanctuary.</i> 727 01:14:16,318 --> 01:14:18,445 <i>That's for a start.</i> 728 01:14:18,654 --> 01:14:21,589 <i>Why this cut in time,</i> <i>this connection of memories?</i> 729 01:14:21,790 --> 01:14:24,315 <i>That's just it.</i> <i>He can't understand.</i> 730 01:14:24,526 --> 01:14:28,121 <i>He comes not from another planet</i> <i>but from our future.</i> 731 01:14:28,330 --> 01:14:32,699 <i>4001, when the human brain</i> <i>has reached the era of full employment.</i> 732 01:14:32,901 --> 01:14:34,869 <i>Everything works to perfection - 733 01:14:35,070 --> 01:14:37,630 <i>all that we now allow to slumber,</i> <i>including memory.</i> 734 01:14:38,507 --> 01:14:43,137 <i>The logical result.</i> <i>Total recall is memory anesthetized.</i> 735 01:14:43,345 --> 01:14:46,212 <i>After so many stories of men</i> <i>who forgot how to remember,</i> 736 01:14:46,415 --> 01:14:49,179 <i>here's the story of one</i> <i>who forgot how to forget...</i> 737 01:14:50,519 --> 01:14:52,749 <i>and who, through some peculiarity</i> <i>of his nature,</i> 738 01:14:52,955 --> 01:14:56,914 <i>instead of being proud and scorning</i> <i>mankind of the past and its shadows,</i> 739 01:14:57,125 --> 01:15:01,391 <i>turned to it first with curiosity</i> <i>and then with compassion.</i> 740 01:15:01,730 --> 01:15:03,960 <i>In the world he comes from,</i> <i>to call forth a vision,</i> 741 01:15:04,166 --> 01:15:07,101 <i>to be moved by a portrait,</i> <i>to tremble at the sound of music</i> 742 01:15:07,302 --> 01:15:11,033 <i>can only be signs</i> <i>of a long and painful prehistory.</i> 743 01:15:11,573 --> 01:15:13,473 <i>He wants to understand.</i> 744 01:15:13,675 --> 01:15:17,441 <i>He feels these infirmities of time</i> <i>like an injustice,</i> 745 01:15:17,646 --> 01:15:21,707 <i>and he reacts to it like Che Guevara</i> <i>or youth of the '60s - with indignation.</i> 746 01:15:23,285 --> 01:15:25,378 <i>He's a third worlder of time.</i> 747 01:15:25,587 --> 01:15:28,556 <i>The idea that unhappiness</i> <i>had existed in his planet's past</i> 748 01:15:28,757 --> 01:15:32,921 <i>is as unbearable to him as the existence</i> <i>of poverty in their present moment.</i> 749 01:15:36,832 --> 01:15:38,925 <i>Naturally, he will fail.</i> 750 01:15:39,134 --> 01:15:41,364 <i>The unhappiness he discovers</i> <i>is as inaccessible to him</i> 751 01:15:41,570 --> 01:15:46,132 <i>as the poverty of a poor country</i> <i>is to the children of a rich one.</i> 752 01:15:46,341 --> 01:15:49,139 <i>He's chosen</i> <i>to give up his privileges,</i> 753 01:15:49,344 --> 01:15:53,246 <i>but he can do nothing about the privilege</i> <i>that has allowed him to choose.</i> 754 01:15:54,516 --> 01:15:57,610 <i>His only comfort is precisely</i> <i>what threw him into this absurd quest.</i> 755 01:15:57,819 --> 01:16:00,583 <i>A song cycle by Moussorgski.</i> 756 01:16:00,889 --> 01:16:03,653 <i>It's still sung</i> <i>in the 40th century.</i> 757 01:16:03,859 --> 01:16:07,056 <i>Its meaning has been lost,</i> <i>but for the first time, he glimpsed</i> 758 01:16:07,262 --> 01:16:09,492 <i>the presence of that thing</i> <i>he didn't understand,</i> 759 01:16:09,698 --> 01:16:11,996 <i>which had to do</i> <i>with unhappiness and memory,</i> 760 01:16:12,200 --> 01:16:14,361 <i>which he must grasp at all cost,</i> 761 01:16:14,570 --> 01:16:18,802 <i>and toward which, slowly,</i> <i>heavily, he began to walk.</i> 762 01:16:21,843 --> 01:16:24,607 <i>Of course,</i> <i>I'll never make that film.</i> 763 01:16:26,715 --> 01:16:30,173 <i>Nonetheless, I'm collecting sets,</i> <i>devising plot twists,</i> 764 01:16:30,385 --> 01:16:32,683 <i>putting in my favorite creatures.</i> 765 01:16:32,888 --> 01:16:35,186 <i>I've even given it a title,</i> 766 01:16:35,791 --> 01:16:38,282 <i>indeed, the title</i> <i>of those Moussorgski songs.</i> 767 01:16:38,493 --> 01:16:40,620 Sunless." 768 01:17:00,983 --> 01:17:03,952 <i>"On May 15th, 1945,</i> <i>at 7.00 a.m.,</i> 769 01:17:04,152 --> 01:17:06,814 <i>the 382nd US Infantry Regiment</i> 770 01:17:07,022 --> 01:17:10,958 <i>attacked a hill in Okinawa</i> <i>they had renamed Dick Hill.</i> 771 01:17:11,159 --> 01:17:14,651 <i>I suppose they believed</i> <i>they were conquering Japanese soil</i> 772 01:17:14,863 --> 01:17:17,559 <i>and knew nothing</i> <i>about Ryukyu civilization.</i> 773 01:17:17,766 --> 01:17:19,393 <i>Neither did I,</i> 774 01:17:19,601 --> 01:17:21,728 <i>except that the faces</i> <i>of the market ladies at Itoman</i> 775 01:17:21,937 --> 01:17:25,498 <i>spoke to me more of Gauguin</i> <i>than of Utamaro.</i> 776 01:17:25,707 --> 01:17:29,803 <i>Through centuries of dreamy vassalage,</i> <i>time had not stirred in the archipelago.</i> 777 01:17:30,012 --> 01:17:31,946 <i>Then came the rupture.</i> 778 01:17:32,514 --> 01:17:36,917 <i>Is it a property of islands to make women</i> <i>the guardians of their memory?</i> 779 01:17:37,119 --> 01:17:41,317 <i>I learned that, as in the Bijagos, magic</i> <i>knowledge is passed on through women.</i> 780 01:17:41,523 --> 01:17:44,253 <i>Each community</i> <i>has its priestess, the</i> noro, 781 01:17:44,459 --> 01:17:47,826 <i>who presides over all ceremonies,</i> <i>with the exception of funerals.</i> 782 01:17:48,497 --> 01:17:50,590 <i>The Japanese defended</i> <i>their position inch by inch.</i> 783 01:17:50,799 --> 01:17:54,326 <i>At the end of the day,</i> <i>the remnants of L Company</i> 784 01:17:54,536 --> 01:17:57,061 <i>had gotten only</i> <i>halfway up the hill-</i> 785 01:17:57,339 --> 01:17:59,739 <i>a hill like the one</i> <i>where I followed some villagers</i> 786 01:17:59,941 --> 01:18:03,274 <i>on their way</i> <i>to a purification ceremony.</i> 787 01:18:03,478 --> 01:18:05,878 <i>The</i> noro <i>communicates</i> <i>with the gods of the sea,</i> 788 01:18:06,081 --> 01:18:07,981 <i>of rain, of earth, of fire.</i> 789 01:18:08,183 --> 01:18:12,313 <i>She speaks of them</i> <i>as of family members who've made good.</i> 790 01:18:12,521 --> 01:18:16,514 <i>All bow down before the Sister Deity,</i> <i>a reflection, in the absolute,</i> 791 01:18:16,725 --> 01:18:19,626 <i>of a privileged relationship</i> <i>between brother and sister.</i> 792 01:18:19,828 --> 01:18:23,559 <i>Even after her death, the sister</i> <i>maintains her spiritual predominance.</i> 793 01:18:23,765 --> 01:18:25,733 <i>At dawn</i> <i>the Americans withdrew.</i> 794 01:18:25,934 --> 01:18:28,732 <i>Fighting went on for a month</i> <i>before the island surrendered-</i> 795 01:18:28,937 --> 01:18:31,371 <i>and toppled</i> <i>into the modern world.</i> 796 01:18:31,573 --> 01:18:33,302 <i>Twenty-seven years</i> <i>of American occupation,</i> 797 01:18:33,508 --> 01:18:35,703 <i>Japan's disputed</i> <i>sovereignty restored.</i> 798 01:18:35,911 --> 01:18:38,072 <i>Two miles from bowling alleys</i> <i>and gas stations,</i> 799 01:18:38,280 --> 01:18:41,511 <i>the</i> noro <i>continues her dialogue</i> <i>with the gods.</i> 800 01:18:41,717 --> 01:18:44,777 <i>When she's gone,</i> <i>the dialogue will end.</i> 801 01:18:44,986 --> 01:18:48,945 <i>Brothers will no longer know that</i> <i>their dead sister is watching over them.</i> 802 01:19:58,226 --> 01:20:02,253 <i>When filming this ceremony, I knew</i> <i>I was present at the end of something.</i> 803 01:20:02,931 --> 01:20:06,367 <i>Magical cultures that disappear</i> <i>leave traces for those who follow.</i> 804 01:20:06,568 --> 01:20:08,832 <i>This one will leave none.</i> 805 01:20:09,037 --> 01:20:11,301 <i>The rupture in history</i> <i>has been too violent.</i> 806 01:20:11,506 --> 01:20:14,066 <i>I touched that rupture</i> <i>at the top of the hill,</i> 807 01:20:14,276 --> 01:20:16,244 <i>as I had at the edge of the ditch</i> 808 01:20:16,444 --> 01:20:19,413 <i>where 200 girls used grenades</i> <i>in 1945 to commit suicide</i> 809 01:20:19,614 --> 01:20:23,243 <i>rather than fall</i> <i>into American hands.</i> 810 01:20:23,451 --> 01:20:25,510 <i>People have</i> <i>their pictures taken here.</i> 811 01:20:25,720 --> 01:20:29,918 <i>Grenade-shaped cigarette lighters</i> <i>are sold nearby as souvenirs.</i> 812 01:20:34,930 --> 01:20:36,397 <i>On Hayao's machine,</i> 813 01:20:36,598 --> 01:20:41,934 <i>war resembles letters being burned,</i> <i>shredded in a fiery frame.</i> 814 01:20:42,204 --> 01:20:45,867 <i>The code name for Pearl Harbor</i> <i>was "Tora, tora, tora,"</i> 815 01:20:46,074 --> 01:20:49,771 <i>the name of the cat the couple</i> <i>in Gotokuji was praying for.</i> 816 01:20:49,978 --> 01:20:54,847 <i>So all of this will have begun with</i> <i>the name of a cat pronounced three times.</i> 817 01:21:02,490 --> 01:21:07,052 <i>Off Okinawa,</i> <i>kamikazes dived on the American fleet.</i> 818 01:21:07,262 --> 01:21:11,062 <i>They would become a legend, and were</i> <i>likelier material for it, obviously,</i> 819 01:21:11,266 --> 01:21:14,258 <i>than the special units who exposed their</i> <i>prisoners to the bitter frost of Manchuria</i> 820 01:21:14,469 --> 01:21:19,406 <i>and then to hot water to see</i> <i>how fast flesh separates from bone.</i> 821 01:21:20,275 --> 01:21:24,439 <i>Only their last letters would reveal</i> <i>that the kamikaze weren't all volunteers,</i> 822 01:21:24,646 --> 01:21:27,444 <i>nor were they all</i> <i>swashbuckling samurai.</i> 823 01:21:27,649 --> 01:21:32,313 <i>Before drinking his last cup of sake,</i> <i>Ryoji Uebara had written,</i> 824 01:21:32,520 --> 01:21:37,116 <i>'I've always thought that Japan</i> <i>must live free to live eternally.</i> 825 01:21:37,325 --> 01:21:41,489 <i>It may seem idiotic to say that today,</i> <i>under a totalitarian regime.</i> 826 01:21:42,063 --> 01:21:47,160 <i>We kamikaze pilots are machines.</i> <i>We have nothing to say</i> 827 01:21:47,369 --> 01:21:51,169 <i>except to beg our compatriots to make</i> <i>Japan the great country of our dreams.</i> 828 01:21:51,373 --> 01:21:53,170 <i>In the plane</i> <i>I'm a machine,</i> 829 01:21:53,375 --> 01:21:56,276 <i>a bit of magnetized metal that will</i> <i>plaster itself to an aircraft carrier,</i> 830 01:21:56,478 --> 01:22:01,415 <i>but on the ground, I'm a human being,</i> <i>with feelings and passions.</i> 831 01:22:01,616 --> 01:22:03,811 <i>Please excuse</i> <i>these disorganized thoughts.</i> 832 01:22:04,019 --> 01:22:05,919 <i>I'm leaving you</i> <i>with a rather melancholy picture,</i> 833 01:22:06,121 --> 01:22:08,589 <i>but in the depths of my heart,</i> <i>I'm happy.</i> 834 01:22:08,790 --> 01:22:12,385 <i>I've spoken frankly.</i> <i>Forgive me. "'</i> 835 01:23:36,945 --> 01:23:40,108 <i>Every time he came back from Africa,</i> <i>he stopped at the Island of Sal,</i> 836 01:23:40,315 --> 01:23:43,443 <i>a salt rock</i> <i>in the middle of the Atlantic.</i> 837 01:23:43,651 --> 01:23:45,516 <i>At the end of the island,</i> 838 01:23:45,720 --> 01:23:48,553 <i>beyond the village of Santa Maria</i> <i>and its cemetery of painted tombs,</i> 839 01:23:48,757 --> 01:23:52,659 <i>one need only walk straight ahead</i> <i>to meet the desert.</i> 840 01:24:06,441 --> 01:24:08,432 <i>He wrote...</i> 841 01:24:08,643 --> 01:24:10,406 <i>"I've understood the visions.</i> 842 01:24:10,612 --> 01:24:13,080 <i>Suddenly you're in the desert</i> <i>the way you are in the night.</i> 843 01:24:13,281 --> 01:24:15,340 <i>Whatever is not desert</i> <i>no longer exists.</i> 844 01:24:15,550 --> 01:24:18,883 <i>You don't want to believe</i> <i>the images that crop up.</i> 845 01:25:14,542 --> 01:25:17,909 <i>Did I write that there are emus</i> <i>in the Ile de France?</i> 846 01:25:19,614 --> 01:25:23,414 <i>'Island of France' sounds strange</i> <i>on the Island of Sal.</i> 847 01:25:23,651 --> 01:25:25,778 <i>My memory superimposes</i> <i>two towers,</i> 848 01:25:25,987 --> 01:25:29,286 <i>the one in the castle ruins of Montepilloy</i> <i>that Joan of Arc used as a camp,</i> 849 01:25:30,091 --> 01:25:32,355 <i>and the lighthouse tower</i> <i>at the southern tip of Sal,</i> 850 01:25:32,560 --> 01:25:35,757 <i>probably one</i> <i>of the last lighthouses to use oil.</i> 851 01:26:00,388 --> 01:26:03,118 <i>A lighthouse in the Sahel</i> <i>looks pasted on</i> 852 01:26:03,324 --> 01:26:07,226 <i>until you see the ocean</i> <i>at the edge of the sand and salt.</i> 853 01:26:07,962 --> 01:26:11,295 <i>Crews of transcontinental planes</i> <i>are rotated on Sal.</i> 854 01:26:11,499 --> 01:26:13,558 <i>Their club brings</i> <i>to this empty frontier</i> 855 01:26:13,768 --> 01:26:17,431 <i>a small touch of the seaside resort</i> <i>that makes the rest even more unreal.</i> 856 01:26:17,639 --> 01:26:20,802 <i>They feed the stray dogs</i> <i>that live on the beach.</i> 857 01:26:34,522 --> 01:26:37,184 <i>My dogs seemed</i> <i>pretty nervous that evening.</i> 858 01:26:37,392 --> 01:26:41,158 <i>They played with the sea</i> <i>as I'd never seen them before.</i> 859 01:26:41,396 --> 01:26:44,126 <i>Listening to Radio Hong Kong</i> <i>later on, I understood.</i> 860 01:26:44,332 --> 01:26:47,529 <i>That was the first day</i> <i>of the lunar new year,</i> 861 01:26:47,735 --> 01:26:52,399 <i>and for the first time in 60 years, the</i> <i>sign of the Dog met the sign of Water. " 862 01:27:35,583 --> 01:27:37,915 <i>"Out there,</i> <i>11,000 miles away,</i> 863 01:27:38,119 --> 01:27:41,020 <i>a single shadow remains immobile</i> <i>among the long moving shadows</i> 864 01:27:41,222 --> 01:27:43,782 <i>that the January light</i> <i>casts on the ground in Tokyo.</i> 865 01:27:43,992 --> 01:27:46,426 <i>The shadow of the Asakusa monk.</i> 866 01:28:36,110 --> 01:28:39,136 <i>For in Japan too</i> <i>the Year of the Dog is beginning.</i> 867 01:28:39,347 --> 01:28:42,248 <i>Temples are filled with visitors</i> <i>who toss their coins</i> 868 01:28:42,450 --> 01:28:44,418 <i>and pray, Japanese-style - 869 01:28:44,619 --> 01:28:48,111 <i>a prayer slipped quietly into life</i> <i>without interrupting it.</i> 870 01:29:19,987 --> 01:29:22,512 <i>Stranded at the end of the world,</i> <i>on my Island of Sal,</i> 871 01:29:22,724 --> 01:29:25,056 <i>in the company</i> <i>of my prancing dogs,</i> 872 01:29:25,259 --> 01:29:26,920 <i>I remember that January in Tokyo,</i> 873 01:29:27,128 --> 01:29:31,155 <i>or rather I remember the images</i> <i>I filmed that January in Tokyo.</i> 874 01:29:31,366 --> 01:29:33,459 <i>They've replaced my memory.</i> 875 01:29:33,668 --> 01:29:35,431 <i>They are my memory.</i> 876 01:29:36,003 --> 01:29:41,168 <i>I wonder how people remember things</i> <i>who don't film or photograph or tape.</i> 877 01:29:41,376 --> 01:29:44,072 <i>How has mankind</i> <i>managed to remember?</i> 878 01:29:44,278 --> 01:29:47,076 <i>I know.</i> <i>It wrote the Bible.</i> 879 01:29:47,615 --> 01:29:50,550 <i>The new bible will be</i> <i>an eternal magnetic tape</i> 880 01:29:50,752 --> 01:29:54,813 <i>of a time that will have to reread itself</i> <i>constantly, just to know it existed.</i> 881 01:29:55,823 --> 01:29:58,621 <i>As we await the year 4001</i> <i>and its total recall,</i> 882 01:29:58,826 --> 01:30:01,158 <i>that's what the New Year oracles</i> 883 01:30:01,362 --> 01:30:04,627 <i>that we take out of</i> <i>their long hexagonal boxes offer us.</i> 884 01:30:04,832 --> 01:30:07,130 <i>A little more power</i> <i>over that memory</i> 885 01:30:07,335 --> 01:30:09,803 <i>that runs from camp to camp,</i> <i>like Joan of Arc,</i> 886 01:30:10,004 --> 01:30:12,302 <i>that a shortwave announcement</i> <i>from Hong Kong Radio</i> 887 01:30:12,507 --> 01:30:15,442 <i>picked up on a Cape Verde Island</i> <i>projects to Tokyo,</i> 888 01:30:15,643 --> 01:30:18,168 <i>and that the memory of a precise color</i> <i>in the street bounces back</i> 889 01:30:18,379 --> 01:30:20,609 <i>on another country,</i> <i>another distance,</i> 890 01:30:20,815 --> 01:30:24,410 <i>another music, endlessly.</i> 891 01:30:32,427 --> 01:30:34,395 <i>At the end of memory's path,</i> 892 01:30:34,962 --> 01:30:37,863 <i>the ideograms of the Island of France</i> <i>are no less enigmatic</i> 893 01:30:38,065 --> 01:30:42,832 <i>than the kanji of Tokyo</i> <i>in the miraculous light of the New Year.</i> 894 01:30:43,037 --> 01:30:44,698 <i>It's Indian winter.</i> 895 01:30:44,906 --> 01:30:46,806 <i>It's as if the air</i> <i>were the first element</i> 896 01:30:47,008 --> 01:30:49,169 <i>to emerge purified</i> <i>from the countless ceremonies</i> 897 01:30:49,377 --> 01:30:53,177 <i>the Japanese use to wash off one year</i> <i>before entering the next.</i> 898 01:30:53,381 --> 01:30:55,315 <i>A full month is just enough</i> 899 01:30:55,516 --> 01:30:59,782 <i>to fulfill all the duties</i> <i>that courtesy owes to time,</i> 900 01:30:59,987 --> 01:31:01,716 <i>the most interesting</i> <i>being the acquisition,</i> 901 01:31:01,923 --> 01:31:04,323 <i>at the temple of Tenjin,</i> <i>of the Uso bird,</i> 902 01:31:04,525 --> 01:31:07,756 <i>who, according to one tradition,</i> <i>eats all your lies of the year to come,</i> 903 01:31:07,962 --> 01:31:11,489 <i>and according to another,</i> <i>turns them into truths.</i> 904 01:31:11,799 --> 01:31:14,893 <i>But what gives the street</i> <i>its color in January,</i> 905 01:31:15,102 --> 01:31:17,332 <i>what makes it suddenly different,</i> 906 01:31:17,538 --> 01:31:19,904 <i>is the appearance</i> <i>of the kimonos.</i> 907 01:31:20,475 --> 01:31:22,170 <i>In the street,</i> <i>in stores, in offices,</i> 908 01:31:22,376 --> 01:31:24,537 <i>even at the stock exchange</i> <i>on opening day,</i> 909 01:31:24,745 --> 01:31:28,579 <i>girls bring out</i> <i>their fur-collared winter kimonos.</i> 910 01:31:28,783 --> 01:31:30,250 <i>At that time of year,</i> 911 01:31:30,451 --> 01:31:34,080 <i>others may invent extra-flat TVsets,</i> <i>commit suicide with chain saws,</i> 912 01:31:34,288 --> 01:31:37,223 <i>or capture two-thirds of the world market</i> <i>for semiconductors - good for them!</i> 913 01:31:37,425 --> 01:31:39,893 <i>All you see are the girls.</i> 914 01:31:50,838 --> 01:31:53,102 <i>January 15th</i> <i>is Coming-of-Age day,</i> 915 01:31:53,307 --> 01:31:56,538 <i>an obligatory celebration</i> <i>in the life of a young Japanese woman.</i> 916 01:31:56,744 --> 01:32:01,306 <i>City governments distribute bags</i> <i>filled with gifts, date books, advice.</i> 917 01:32:01,516 --> 01:32:04,417 <i>How to be a good citizen,</i> <i>mother and wife.</i> 918 01:32:05,653 --> 01:32:09,282 <i>On that day, every 20-year-old girl</i> <i>can phone her family for free,</i> 919 01:32:09,490 --> 01:32:11,924 <i>no matter where in Japan.</i> 920 01:32:13,294 --> 01:32:17,287 <i>Work, home and country - <i>this is the anteroom of adulthood.</i> 921 01:32:17,865 --> 01:32:21,858 <i>The world of the Takenoko and of</i> <i>rock singers speeds away like a rocket.</i> 922 01:32:22,270 --> 01:32:26,434 <i>Speakers explain</i> <i>what society expects of them.</i> 923 01:32:26,641 --> 01:32:29,940 <i>How long will they take</i> <i>to forget the secret?</i> 924 01:33:28,803 --> 01:33:30,828 <i>And when</i> <i>all the celebrations are over,</i> 925 01:33:31,038 --> 01:33:34,769 <i>all that remains is to collect</i> <i>the ornaments and accessories</i> 926 01:33:34,976 --> 01:33:37,444 <i>and burn them</i> <i>in one more celebration.</i> 927 01:34:22,423 --> 01:34:24,391 <i>This is</i> dondoyaki, 928 01:34:24,592 --> 01:34:28,494 <i>a Shinto blessing of the debris</i> <i>that has a right to immortality,</i> 929 01:34:28,696 --> 01:34:30,425 <i>like the dolls at Ueno.</i> 930 01:34:30,631 --> 01:34:34,123 <i>The last stage in the poignancy of things</i> <i>before they disappear.</i> 931 01:34:35,202 --> 01:34:39,832 <i>Daruma, the one-eyed spirit,</i> <i>reigns supreme atop the bonfire.</i> 932 01:34:40,041 --> 01:34:42,703 <i>Abandonment must be a feast,</i> <i>laceration must be a feast,</i> 933 01:34:42,910 --> 01:34:45,276 <i>and the farewell</i> <i>to all that one has lost, broken, used,</i> 934 01:34:45,479 --> 01:34:47,447 <i>must be ennobled by a ceremony.</i> 935 01:34:47,648 --> 01:34:50,446 <i>It's Japan that could fulfill</i> <i>the wish of that French writer</i> 936 01:34:50,651 --> 01:34:53,176 <i>who wanted divorce</i> <i>to be made a sacrament.</i> 937 01:34:53,387 --> 01:34:55,548 <i>The only baffling part</i> <i>of this ritual</i> 938 01:34:55,756 --> 01:34:59,214 <i>was the children striking</i> <i>the ground with long poles.</i> 939 01:34:59,427 --> 01:35:01,452 <i>I only got one explanation,</i> <i>a rather peculiar one.</i> 940 01:35:01,662 --> 01:35:05,189 <i>I thought it might be</i> <i>a small, intimate ritual,</i> 941 01:35:05,399 --> 01:35:07,833 <i>but it was to chase away moles.</i> 942 01:35:50,344 --> 01:35:55,247 <i>And that's where my three children from</i> <i>Iceland came and grafted themselves in.</i> 943 01:35:56,317 --> 01:35:58,512 <i>I picked up the whole shot again,</i> 944 01:35:58,719 --> 01:36:00,619 <i>adding the somewhat</i> <i>hazy ending,</i> 945 01:36:00,821 --> 01:36:04,222 <i>the frame trembling</i> <i>under the force of the wind.</i> 946 01:36:04,425 --> 01:36:06,359 <i>Everything I had cut</i> <i>in order to "tidy up"</i> 947 01:36:06,560 --> 01:36:09,552 <i>and that said better than all the rest</i> <i>what I saw in that moment,</i> 948 01:36:09,764 --> 01:36:12,232 <i>why I held it at arm's length,</i> <i>at zoom's length,</i> 949 01:36:12,433 --> 01:36:15,425 <i>until its last 24th of a second.</i> 950 01:36:17,338 --> 01:36:19,829 <i>The city of Heimaey</i> <i>spread out below us,</i> 951 01:36:20,040 --> 01:36:21,974 <i>and when, five years later,</i> <i>my friend Haroun Tazieff</i> 952 01:36:22,176 --> 01:36:24,371 <i>sent me the film</i> <i>he'd just shot in the same place,</i> 953 01:36:24,578 --> 01:36:29,743 <i>I lacked only the name to know</i> <i>that nature performs its own</i> dondoyaki. 954 01:36:30,785 --> 01:36:33,583 <i>The island's volcano</i> <i>had reawakened.</i> 955 01:36:33,788 --> 01:36:35,415 <i>I looked at those pictures,</i> 956 01:36:35,623 --> 01:36:40,060 <i>and it was as if all of 1965</i> <i>had just been covered in ash.</i> 957 01:36:56,744 --> 01:36:58,735 <i>So all one had to do was wait,</i> 958 01:36:58,946 --> 01:37:02,575 <i>and the planet itself</i> <i>would stage the working of time.</i> 959 01:37:03,551 --> 01:37:06,349 <i>I saw again</i> <i>what had been my window.</i> 960 01:37:06,554 --> 01:37:09,489 <i>I saw familiar roofs</i> <i>and balconies emerge,</i> 961 01:37:09,690 --> 01:37:12,420 <i>the landmarks of the walks</i> <i>I took through town every day,</i> 962 01:37:12,626 --> 01:37:15,459 <i>down to the cliff</i> <i>where I'd met the children.</i> 963 01:37:16,997 --> 01:37:20,797 <i>The cat with white socks</i> <i>that Haroun had kindly filmed for me</i> 964 01:37:21,001 --> 01:37:23,561 <i>naturally found its place,</i> 965 01:37:23,771 --> 01:37:27,138 <i>and I thought that of all the prayers</i> <i>to time that I'd studied this trip,</i> 966 01:37:27,341 --> 01:37:30,105 <i>the kindest was the one spoken</i> <i>by the woman of Gotokuji,</i> 967 01:37:30,311 --> 01:37:32,609 <i>who said simply to her cat Tora,</i> 968 01:37:32,813 --> 01:37:36,909 <i>"Beloved cat, wherever you are,</i> <i>may your soul rest in peace. " 969 01:37:59,573 --> 01:38:02,667 <i>And then, in its turn,</i> <i>the journey entered the Zone.</i> 970 01:38:03,444 --> 01:38:07,312 <i>Hayao showed me my images</i> <i>already touched by the moss of time,</i> 971 01:38:07,514 --> 01:38:10,381 <i>freed of the lie that had prolonged</i> <i>the existence of those moments</i> 972 01:38:10,584 --> 01:38:13,052 <i>swallowed by the spiral.</i> 973 01:38:28,769 --> 01:38:30,999 <i>When spring came</i> 974 01:38:31,205 --> 01:38:35,164 <i>and every crow announced its arrival</i> <i>by raising his cry half a tone,</i> 975 01:38:35,809 --> 01:38:40,439 <i>I took the green train of the Yamanote</i> <i>line and got off at Tokyo station,</i> 976 01:38:40,648 --> 01:38:43,481 <i>near the central post office.</i> 977 01:38:43,918 --> 01:38:45,977 <i>Though the street was empty,</i> 978 01:38:46,186 --> 01:38:48,677 <i>I waited at the red light,</i> <i>Japanese-style,</i> 979 01:38:48,989 --> 01:38:52,322 <i>to leave space</i> <i>for the spirits of broken cars.</i> 980 01:38:52,526 --> 01:38:54,357 <i>Though I was expecting no letter,</i> 981 01:38:54,561 --> 01:38:57,121 <i>I stopped</i> <i>at the general delivery window,</i> 982 01:38:57,331 --> 01:38:59,993 <i>for one must honor</i> <i>the spirits of torn-up letters,</i> 983 01:39:00,200 --> 01:39:04,796 <i>and at the airmail counter,</i> <i>to hail the spirits of unmailed letters.</i> 984 01:39:06,040 --> 01:39:08,133 <i>I took the measure</i> <i>of the unbearable vanity of the West</i> 985 01:39:08,342 --> 01:39:10,469 <i>that has always favored</i> <i>being over non-being,</i> 986 01:39:10,678 --> 01:39:12,373 <i>what is spoken</i> <i>over what's left unsaid.</i> 987 01:39:12,579 --> 01:39:16,379 <i>I walked along the little stalls</i> <i>of clothing dealers.</i> 988 01:39:16,583 --> 01:39:20,041 <i>In the distance I heard Mr. Akao's voice</i> <i>reverberating from the loudspeakers,</i> 989 01:39:20,254 --> 01:39:22,449 <i>now a half tone higher.</i> 990 01:39:22,656 --> 01:39:24,419 <i>Then I went down</i> <i>to the basement</i> 991 01:39:24,625 --> 01:39:28,083 <i>where my maniac friend busies</i> <i>himself with his electronic graffiti.</i> 992 01:39:28,329 --> 01:39:30,263 <i>In the end</i> <i>his language touches me,</i> 993 01:39:30,464 --> 01:39:34,958 <i>for he talks to that part of us that insists</i> <i>on drawing profiles on prison walls.</i> 994 01:39:35,169 --> 01:39:37,103 <i>A piece of chalk</i> <i>to follow the contours</i> 995 01:39:37,304 --> 01:39:40,831 <i>of what is not,</i> <i>or is no longer, or is not yet.</i> 996 01:39:41,108 --> 01:39:43,804 <i>The handwriting each of us</i> <i>will use to draw up</i> 997 01:39:44,011 --> 01:39:46,946 <i>his own list of things</i> <i>that quicken the heart - 998 01:39:47,147 --> 01:39:49,877 <i>to offer up or to erase.</i> 999 01:39:50,751 --> 01:39:53,049 <i>In that moment,</i> <i>poetry will be made by everyone,</i> 1000 01:39:53,253 --> 01:39:55,983 <i>and there will be emus</i> <i>in the Zone. " 1001 01:40:15,476 --> 01:40:17,444 <i>He writes to me from Japan.</i> 1002 01:40:17,644 --> 01:40:19,544 <i>He writes to me from Africa.</i> 1003 01:40:19,747 --> 01:40:23,581 <i>He says he can now summon up the look</i> <i>on the market lady's face in Praia</i> 1004 01:40:23,784 --> 01:40:25,979 <i>that had lasted</i> <i>only the length of a film frame.</i> 1005 01:40:27,688 --> 01:40:31,089 <i>Will there be</i> <i>a last letter someday?</i> 1006 01:40:34,561 --> 01:40:38,156 IN THE FRENCH AUDIO VERSION, 1007 01:40:38,365 --> 01:40:44,235 THE LETTERS OF SANDOR KRASNA WERE READ BY FLORENCE DELAY