L’homme-vertige: Tales of a City

Decay, neglect and destruction as far as the eye can see: Pointe-à-Pitre, the largest city in the small Caribbean archipelago of Guadeloupe, is in a state of disrepair. The diggers belonging to the demolition firm ‘Avenir Déconstruction’ are tearing down blocks of flats that no longer have one important thing: a future. The filmmaker spent six years drifting through her lethargic hometown to present it to us as a city of ghosts captured in precisely composed images and heightened by the sound design. In its empty streets, she encounters people teetering on the brink of the abyss, yet refusing to admit defeat, including former freedom fighter Ti Chal, drug addict Eddie and the fish scaler Kanpèch. And the poet Eric, who recites texts by Joël Beuze and Amílcar Cabral. She engages with them with great empathy, revealing their wounds and their daily struggle for survival – and thus ensures that their memory is preserved through this film. (bik)