Et la lumière fut
France / West Germany / Italy,
1989, 106 min
Shown in 1991
CREDITS
- dir
-
Otar Iosseliani
- prod
-
Alain Queffelean
- scr
-
Otar Iosseliani
- cam
-
Robert Alazraki
- editor
-
Otar Iosseliani, Ursula West, Marie-Agnès Blum
- cast
-
Sigalon Sagna, Saly Badji, Binta Cisse, Marie-Christine Dième
- source
-
Les Filmes du Triangle
- premiere
-
U.S. Premiere
OTHER
A crocodile drifts down a river, carrying a huntress on its back. A woman asks a carved idol to fill a dry well and it rains—’til she asks the idol to make it stop. In a small village lives a tribe of forest people who hunt, marry, squabble and dance in a state of grace. Into this enchanted woodland intrudes the modern world. Once touched, the village's magic, its culture, is broken. This lovely, lulling, troubling fable, filmed among the Diola people in their language, has been criticized as a European's fantasy of Africa. That it surely is—Rousseau's noble savage, pure and unsullied, comes to mind. But as director Otar Iosseliani explains: "It's not specifically about African cultures, but the theme of destruction of culture is clearer set in Black Africa because there are still living cultures there, whereas we have become savages, corrupted by property and greed." Whether setting his gaze on his native Soviet Georgia (Pastorale, SFIFF 1983), Paris (Favorites of the Moon, SFIFF 1985), Italy (A Little Monastery in Tuscany, SFIFF 1989) or Africa, Iosseliani finds resonant poetry and metaphor in life's movements, the fluidity of everyday existence viewed with tranquil lyricism raised to the level of the spiritual. Frederic Strauss of Cahiers du Cinema notes: "And There Was Light counters the picturesque exoticism [of realism] and teaches us to look afresh at Africa and the society of mankind."
—Alicia Springer
FACTOID #273
In 2006 the Festival widened its scope, screening films at seven satellite venues throughout the city including an arts venue (Intersection for the Arts), a pub (Edinburgh Castle) and a fire station (San Francisco Fire Station #7).
