After a 2008 edition marked by the 30th anniversary of the 3 Continents and departure of Philippe and Alain Jalladeau, we will continue to carry the torch hoping the festival to celebrate many more anniversaries. All along the last three editions, the 3 Continents has been a talent pool of extraordinary discoveries of which it would be superfluous to enounce once again the long list. In addition it has continued highlighting Southern cinema simply exemplary for never sacrificing its desire to make films to frequently hard situations.
A quick review of the 2009 selection actually confirms the never denied ascendancy of the Asian continent. It would be useless to try to mask it, as the imbalance with other continents is striking. We tend in such cases to grieve for the less represented candidates by regretting its breathlessness (we hope that it will be temporary) of South America and the endemic discretion, of African cinema, which only seems to be sustained by a few authors that we are happy to remain faithful to. Then for once, let’s welcome the contrasting extraordinary vitality of Asian cinema, from where we have received a large range of proposals.
One of the first virtues of cinema, when films are old, is to revive at least within the film’s temporality, a past of which we have lost track of. It’s called “Death at Work.” But since the 3 Continents remains a festival that carefully follows up on films, and thus celebrating “life at work ” as well as this other inherent film virtue be it documentary or drama: to give you an idea about how men live elsewhere on the planet, what they think and what their eyes see; the streets, landscapes and other day-to-day matters. It is a very simple design, which arouses a just as easy emotion, but deep and essential that we could call astonishment. Otherness also. To show films that surprise us by the subjects they focus on and the way they look on the world that surrounds them emphasizing on the importance and the existence of cinema as an art is an excellent definition of the 3 Continents Festival’s mission. Any other consideration seems superfluous.
Jérôme Baron and Jean-Philippe Tessé
