So Close So Far

For the film « so close so far », I was especially interested in the relation between a landscape, the history of community that lives within and the way this influenced a visual artist in her deeper personality as she knew the place as a child.

Carmen Perrin invited me to visit the Sun Island she knew as a child, before her family had to leave Bolivia for political reasons. She was only 6 years old when she left and her souvenirs are made of fragments of this landscape and of the special relation her father had with the villagers. He was not only filming them to show their rituals at the time of the agrarian reform, but he was also trying to cope with the inheritance of his family, owners of half of the Island until the 1952 Revolution. This conflict deeply influenced Carmen Perrin’s personality, both as a woman and as a visual artist working in landscape in various contexts.

As a filmmaker, I was interested in capturing what could emerge between Carmen and the villagers, the descendent of those her father filmed in the 50’s. This had to do with her art, but, most important, the film could reveal the distance we experience in our lives with the others. In this film I could link both art and politic, individual and collective destinies, old footages and frontal documentary approach and all this let me experience a true filmic experience that I have a lot of pleasure to share.

Michel Favre