A film, as everyone knows, is a kind of motionless journey. For each of us in the audience, it lasts the length of a screening, at the very least. For some, it has a more personal impact, an inestimable experience whose traces persist over time. Taking the road in some way also means calling for another form of reality to emerge. Although it might not always be planned, or even desired, taking the road offers to push us a little further along – sometimes outside of ourselves – and help us find that part of ourselves and the world that we have stopped seeing. Between cinema and road, between film and car, is an affinity that presents a multitude of surprising possibilities. Why do we travel? To undo the ties that hem us in, to re-sharpen our perception by reconnecting with beings and things and let the path and the walk empty us of the over-sung and totally predictable same old tunes… and then, quite simply, to be in other places, to have stories to tell and to draw nourishment from these, and because we don’t have the choice. To arrive where? The one leaving and the one watching also have in common the fact they don’t always know (or want to know). Stories of learning, recognition, wanderings, migration, unmasking, disappointed hopes. Travelling means learning to live. Road-movies ? Why not.
Jérôme Baron
