Point de dpart/Starting Place (Robert Kramer, 1994)

In 1969, Robert Kramer went to Hanoi in Vietnam and brought back 40 minutes in black and white entitled “The People’s War“. Twenty-three years later, he returned, camera on his shoulder, eager to see, meet, and understand the Vietnam of the 1990s. The filmmaker established the first dialogue with his guide from 1969. It is about translating books (Reed, Cervantes!), and about tastes for powerful texts (“The Last Days That Shook the World“, “Don Quixote“!). From then on, the film will never stop searching for its marks and continually changing them, fascinated by the daily life that it captures in a stunning way, outside of all established frameworks. A true visual score, like a blues with restrained accents, it mixes the past and the present, explores memories, and evokes hopes.