JOURNEY TO THE LAKE PART 3 – TO THE ISLAND

A journey to the land of Lake Bolsena with some people living on its shores, villagers or travelers who came all the way from Africa to this stretch of land between Rome and Siena.

3- Planting, photographing, summoning protective ghosts, each invents an intimate bond with this land of the lake they live upon. Up to the mysterious Bisentina Island, secret heart of this imaginary that connects us to the common ground upon which all of us walk.

A criss-cross of paths runs along Lake Bolsena, a volcanic lake in the centre of Italy. Some of these are ancient Roman roads, whereas other paths, being trodden today, will serve others to come. The lake brims with stories from the past that accompany and haunt the locals, and inform more recent accounts. Through her film, Emmanuelle Démoris shares the secrets and emotions of this land with the initiated. Maria Pace regularly travels across the lake and through nearby medieval towns. She works as a tour guide and is familiar with the local complexities and myths shaping the area. She knows, better than anyone, what the lake can hide in its depths. Franck is from Cameroon. He has come a long way, traveling through Libya and across the sea to the shores of a lake where stories wash up. He lives in a migrant shelter set up in a big villa by the lake with fellow travellers. Like the other people whose paths he crosses—friends, visitors, ghosts from the past—, he forges a connection with the lake. Together, they learn to know it and partake in its continuous transformations. Maria Pace knows this. Whereas she can picture the lake how it was before, thousands of years ago, the newcomer Franck sees it through beginner’s eyes. Taking the time to settle into the surroundings, Emmanuelle Démoris evokes in viewers a welcoming sense of familiarity, showing the region as a shared territory for ever-evolving stories. The emotion conjured up by the film seems to bring us back to a place we know well. “The end of life isn’t about the years, it’s about the emotions: emotions are what we live by.” But how do you give an ending to something that has no end? Can there be an end to a land?

Clémence Arrivé