PASSAGERS DE L'ALSACE (LES)

of ROMBOUT Rob

FRANCE, 2002, 00:52:00

Production : Avec la participation du CNC, GOOD & BAD NEWS, LE MEILLEUR DES MONDES, RTBF
Genre : Documentary, Creative documentary
Keyword : Identity, Cultural Identity, Landscape, Portrait, Relation, Time

Summary :
Fascinated by travel, Rob Rombout tries to share with us his feelings as a stranger, a passer-by, who meets a region and its inhabitants and progressively shows his perception of the alsatian identity, or identities, at a given moment. He visits the region by train and questions "ordinary" people on issues that apparently have no link with the alsatian regional identity or the clichés that generally caracterize the Alsatian. In a train compartment, people don't know each other. The only thing that they have in common is being in that train at the same moment. The characters' life story unfolds all along the tour of the region. Those encounters are a very special moment, in which the act of listening is crucial, as at the psychoanalyst's. At some point, we stop and listen. Their gaze also traces the image of that region through the window of the train. The way they observe : the gaze. As in a train, everyone is following their own route. It is the movement of life. Following those three lines, Rob Rombout goes beyond the capture of personal history and weaves the threads of several particular stories that tell us the collective story of life in a region, as in the snapshot of a moment shared with others, with strangers randomly met on a train. He paints the landscape of life, in the movement of the passing time.

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