Mixing fragmented stories of people with views of a landscape in perpetual transformation we travel intimately in the footsteps of a contemporary Alice in what was once a leafy forest populated by birds and water sources and is today a modern day “concrete jungle” in the center of the infamous northern district of Marseille. At the crossroads of societal, historical, architectural and human issues, nature seems caught in a grip, breathing only in the hollow of a memory of those who lived through it as children in the 60’s and 70’s. Separating image from text, “Là où la terre” paints a portrait of a contemporary neighborhood battered by perpetual violent transformation that echoes in the vulnerable voices of its habitants and the tension between presence and absence, broken down into patterns; plants, animals, humans.
Jeff Silva
Jeff Silva is an American filmmaker and anthropologist who has worked at leading American schools and universities, including the Sensory Ethnography Lab at Harvard University. Trained in cinema and visual arts in the US with a Ph.D. from Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS), Silva humanistically and sensorially combines artistic practices with social science research. He has made four feature films and several shorts, all of which have to do with the fragility of individuals in the midst of turbulent social contexts. His films have been shown in festivals including Visions du Réel, MoMA’s Documentary Fortnight, The Viennale, BAFICI, Doclisboa, Open City Documentary Festival. He is now based in Marseille leading the documentary cinema branch of La fabrique des écritures ethnographiques.
Ramona Badescu
Ramona Badescu is a French-Romanian author of children’s literature, poet. Born in Romania, Badescu immigrated to France at the age of 10 after the fall of the dictatorship. After a period of studying theater and working as an actress, at the age of 22, she published her first book of children’s literature, and thus began a long career as an author. Ramona has since published more than 30 children’s books and poetry in French, garnering numerous accolades and press and have been translated into over 20 different languages. Also a photographer and translator, she has directed her second documentary film in collaboration with Jeff Silva, this being her first feature film, questioning her Romanian roots with her grandfather.