Bring breath to the death of rocks

Overview

Wandering from a study of the handwritten memoirs of Toussaint Louverture in the French National Archives to the prison cell in the Jura Mountains in which they were written, the film proposes an archaeology of the colonial history of France buried within its landscapes and institutions. The film dramatizes the escape of Louverture’s ghost from his castle prison into a form of marronage and errantry within the fields of snow and a dark baroque-like cave. The past is revisited in order to imagine an alternative future, and in doing so the film offers “a prophetic vision of the past.” We hear an echo, a spiral retelling.