Synopsis
They are part of the first generation after the Indochina War. They were born in Vietnam or Martinique. They have inherited a unique and conflicting history. They are wounded by silence, rejection, and misunderstandings. Their fathers, Martinican soldiers, took part in this conflict alongside mainland French forces and all other colonial forces from 1946 to 1954. Their Vietnamese mothers experienced this internal liberation war led by the communist party of Hô Chi Minh. Annette and Jean-Claude are among those who lay the initial foundations of a shared memory by revisiting the journey of their parents, from Martinique to Vietnam, tracing back to the source of a disturbed identity.
A word from Tënk
"Disparèt pran-y," says the Creole.
Disappearance, enamored.
The illusion turned into allusion, the body lying on time, lé zétwal melted into the blood of the piébwa, scattered in dreams weighed by hands awaiting, stirring the depths: in a rupture of lineage, even in the languages gathered by the roots in the paths.
Traps.
The one, and moons.
The sister of the flamboyant is the glyceria. He spins and unravels between Vietnam and Martinique. If one is present for the other, each is also a form of disappearance. When Arlette Pacquit directs Sons and Daughters of Vietnam, she names a history buried within a history, of Caribbean soldiers sent in the name of France to suppress the independent forces of the ill-fated Indochina. Several will desert the army and join the Viet Minh. They will also bind themselves to the country through love. There will be children, woven by the woods of both lands. Pacquit had imagined – echoing the meditated image of a flamboyant overlooking Vietnamese waters – the image of a flowering glyceria in Matinik. "The place of the identical is sometimes an illusion," says the director. The image arrived too late, so the film retains its memory. It is also a way of accepting that "this water seems to drift, 'chayé' us elsewhere."
Nathanaël
Poet, essayist and translator
To be published in 2024
Andidan–cinémas intimes d'Arlette Pacquit.
Conversations entre Arlette Pacquit et Nathanaël
