Synopsis
From the peaks of the High Atlas to a mouth’s cavity, the creative documentary Je parle toutes les langues, mais en arabe (I speak all languages, but in Arabic) takes us on a journey along a vocal furrow that leads from song to language. In the relief of this furrow, the memory of words, the traces of colonial violence, a song of remedy, the history of letters and the cosmos are inscribed. Interviews with “practitioners” of the spoken word are combined by soundscapes and music.
A word from Tënk
In I Speak All Languages, But in Arabic, our heart, head and ears all find satisfaction.
This unclassifiable story by director and musician Myriam Pruvot looks at the very delicate issues of identity, of the sacred and how the languages we speak shape our relation to the world, particularly in a context marked by relations of domination.
While she was in Morocco – questioning her own legitimacy to hold a microphone in a cultural environment of which she claimed to be ignorant – she collected this audio counterpoint in which several characters (and landscapes!) shed light on different facets of an unfathomable question, without it ever being asked in concrete terms.
It's precisely this oblique gaze, this experimentation – expressed in both form and content – that offers precious insights, as much into what's hidden in language as into the power of artistic expression to expand and repair itself.
It just goes to show that the simple act of holding out a microphone with real openness can contribute to the emergence, despite all our questioning, of precious materials that have the power to help us hear ourselves better.
Louis-Olivier Desmarais
Sound designer, composer and musician
