The ‘Gehenna’ in the film’s title alludes to the Biblical valley, analogous with hell or purgatory. It doesn’t feel too far out of place. We retrace the murderous 2002 journey of J.D. through Grande-Synthe, the outskirts of a port town destroyed in World War II and now a place of temporary refuge for thousands of people, themselves displaced by war. And whilst on paper this seems an incongruous proposition, the enigmatic serenity of ‘Triadic Memories’, one of Morton Feldman’s most beautiful piano pieces, works hand in glove with the film’s widescreen cinematography of Grande-Synthe’s hemmed-in urbanism and heavy metal(lurgical) industry.
With an ambitious weave of testimony and conjecture, Souvenirs de la Gehenna becomes a prescient reflection on the disorientation of memory as J.D.’s voice is confronted with the present.
Film details
- Country of production
- France
- Year
- 2015
- Festival edition
- IFFR 2016
- Length
- 56'
- Medium/Format
- DCP
