Guest
Documentary made in Yemen (and first film ever shot in this country) under the leadership of archaeologist Jules Barthou. During the adventure of this film, René Clément will serve four days in prison for having concealed a camera under his clothes, then will be captured by rebels and threatened with being shot. The majority of the negatives will be seized by the guards of Imam Yahia, and it is with the remaining rushes that Clément will edit what becomes The Forbidden Arabia, a film entrusted to the Musée de l’Homme in 1965 where it is forgotten until that ethnologist Claudie Fayein unearths it and has it restored. “This medium-length film abounds in superb and striking images, bringing together the desire to give the most precise possible idea of the country and the artistic research, very striking in terms of colors where pale shades and black predominate, while red , conveyed by sartorial and other details, comes to produce chromatic accents that run through the film.“ (Denitza Bantcheva, “René Clément“, Editions du Revif, 2008)
