Tourneur
a film by Yalda Afsah
A bull fight in the South of France: the arena gets filled with white foam which is blurring the view of human and animal. “Tourneur” shows young men stepping into an arena with a bull, set between archaic conquest and modern dance gestures. Picture and sound, foreground and background, on and off get connected in a highly artificial and surreal manner. Until the bull suddenly enters the scenario.
Festivals
2018 | 71. Locarno Festival | International Competion
2018 | 56. New York Film Festival | International Competion
2018 | 54. Chicago Film Festival | International Competion
Synopsis
A wall of foam is shaking and twitching, it is tough, billowing and sensitive to wind. It is conquering the area such as primeval matter in its galactic system, it gets separated, it is unifying, embraces the deep black of the background, evolves in the foreground, reaches the side. An abstract, molecular, and mythic dance of substance. Afterwards: human movements, dark silhouettes, the sound of shoes passing gritty sand. Young men are running through the screen, they come from the left and from the right they cut through the squad in a volatile, fearful and playful way.
„Tourneur“ shows a bullfight in the South of France. Teenager step into an arena in order to measure up with animalistic superiority, they are creeping and sprinting, they provoke and take cover, they predict and step back. They wear sneakers and a cap some of them get a spherical protective suit around their waist which looks like a futuristic space suit. The white foam flows at the same time and permanently into the arena, it clusters and is blurring the view of the audience behind the fences, of the fighters, of the bull and ours as well. We do not see the animal for a long while. We divine where it is, we see the gazes of the ones who see it, we perceive the natural force just as a potencial. Acoustical accents are filling the abstract panorama: the floating foam, the scratching and snorting of the fighting animal and the rustling steps of the young warriors.
With her experimental documentary short film Yalda Afsah is leading us into a combination of a dancing and fighting round dance between human and animal, between foot and hooves, skin and leather, hands and horns. In the opaque mass of foam an archaic and ritualistic will of controlling the nature is formed, it is turned into a modern performance act and into an own abstraction. The bullfight turns out to be a surrealistic play of movements, which enhances more and more into deep levels of alienation. A highly artificial and reduced sound conducts the view through the masterly constructed panoramas of the pictures meanwhile the off-stage continuously swells what shortly will be swashing into on-stage. „Tourneur“ displays its construction by each cut on the surface of the screen. In front of the pictures we see the frame of its complex staging. The staging covers the film as like a protection suit. It separates us from the shots such like the fence separates the audience from the arena. Until the balance of the relationship changes suddenly when the bull gets into the center of the screen, turns on its own axis, stops and stares directly into the lens of the camera.
FACTS
short documentary | 14 min. | DCP, FullHD, Colour, 5.1 DCP
language: without
Internationale Premiere:
International competition of the Pardi di domani section of the 71st Locarno Festival
Director, Director of Photography, Montage, : Yalda Afsah
Production: Yalda Afsah
Sounddesign: Steffen Martin
Supported by
senate chancellery cultural affairs Berlin, Werkleitz Gesellschaft e.V.