Lifelines 2010, 75 minutes
Feature film by Alain Mazars shot in Laos.
Selected at Montreal International Film Festival "Nouveau Cinéma".
Synopsis
An old Eurasian backpacker dreams of becoming a shaman. A rumor is spreading in South-East Asia saying that nomads hidden in a forest can raise the dead. A criminal kills the travelers he meets.
Press releases
Sélection du Festival du Nouveau Cinéma de Montréal 2010.
If Godard had decided to retire in the Thaï jungle for 10 years to meditate, he might have come back with a movie like LIFELINES. This work is like an UFO in the world of cinema. It could be described as a cross between thriller, fiction, documentary and essay. Alain Mazars, founding member of ACID, is once again the director/writer/editor/ of his movie, and continues to deliver a very unusual body of work. Two of his previous movies were MY CHINESE SISTER (with Alain Bashung) and HALF OF THE SKY. This time, the viewer is immersed in a kind of personal diary written by an old Eurasian backpacker who dreams of becoming a shaman. After meeting a young Burmese girl with supernatural powers in the jungle, the old man decides to start hunting a serial killer who seems to be acting like a vampire, killing lost travelers. By being in contact with the young girl, the backpacker acquires powers that finally go beyond palm-reading. He is able to raise from the dead one by one the victims of the killer, whom he confronts in a fight that is both strange and poetic. Playing with contrasts to enhance the digital aspect of the picture, this movie, which is so outside the norm, literally transports us to another world. Raquel Tremblay (Montréal)
Eithne O' Neill.
LIFELINES is a beautiful movie whose title itself is a paradox about warding off death, the fantasy of parricide, sibling rivalry, deadly hands and the strength of petals and prayers. The soundtrack, the incandescent photography, and then the dimming of the picture all come together in a melancholic world.
Michka Gorki (cinéaste française membre de l'ACID).
I entered into this movie as if it was a dream on the border between life and death. I was carried away by pictures with magical colors into a silent forest, into limitless faces with a deep, intense gaze. An old man, a young woman, extremely beautiful faces, full of intensity. The slow silence, characters appearing and disappearing, strange scenes as if facts didn't exist, as if nothing existed, as if the laws of the world were passing us by, as if the movie belonged to no world in particular. Poetry evoking human limits flows throughout the movie, with a perspective about the mystery of life, the beauty of the invisible that belongs to another culture. The soundtrack evokes an intangible communication, surprising us with what takes place elsewhere. I was carried by a wave of strangeness that bewitched me and disturbed me at the same time. I think that this movie, which is perfectly mastered, is able to make you do some soul-searching and can be the starter for deep conversations. It left a deep impression on me and I feel the need to go back and look into the invisible, to find out what my conscience doesn't know. Michka Gorki (cinéaste française membre de l'ACID)
Pictures
