Autrement, La Molussie

Between 1932 and 1936, Günther Stern, aka Anders (“Differently”), wrote an antifascist novel, still unpublished in French. Almost as madly ambitious as Anders, Nicolas Rey had the idea several years ago of making a film based on Die Molussische Katakombe, which he was unable to read as he knew no German. Spurred on by German-speaking friends who translated fragments of the book for him, he selected passages that have a striking political relevance in today’s world. Shot in outdated 16mm film stock and projected in random order, the nine reels interlace the insistent beauty of landscapes swathed in bluish green, with the biting humour characteristic of the philosophical political fable. “Sound and image need to chafe without killing one another” says Rey: Météo-France employees and workers from a sawmill in the Drome plunge into an imaginary country at the time of Hitler’s rise to power. Depending on the sequence allotted to the audience, a human presence in the closing images will confirm that mankind has survived the Molussian tyranny – or, its absence will suggest that humanity has been swallowed up by what resembles a flooded forest.