ELEGY FOR A LIGHTHOUSE
Directed by Dominique de Rivaz
Documentary |2013| 56 min
Produced by Louise Productions Vevey
She has just lost her father. A short news in a magazine draws her attention to a lighthouse condemned to be extinguished soon at the North coast of Russia. She suddenly knows where she needs to go. But will she be too late again, as she was when her father passed away? What is it that draws her there? The lighthouse that will no longer be? Will there be someone waiting for her? The lighthouse keeper? Maybe will he know how to find solace.
She believes that over there, between the White Sea and the Barent Sea, three hundred verst beyond the Arctic Circle, her mourning will take another sense. In Shoyna, the once so proud fishing port that is no more, devoured by the advancing sand dunes, her sorrow turns into an as fascinating as repulsive curiosity for this strange place where shipwrecks of trawlers and human bones are littering the sand dunes.
Death in Shoyna goes hand in hand with life.
Her life.
At low tide, buried memories of her father merge when he took her at the French Atlantic coast. She was five years old. And she remembers this picture of her, a thoughtful little girl on the steps of a spiral staircase, the one of a Breton lighthouse...
Is it this remote image in her deep inner self that has made her become a filmmaker? In her mysterious search for a place to mourn, it seems that her quest makes suddenly sense.
Special screenings:
tuesday April 29th ,2013 at cinéma Bel-Air in Yverdon at 6:45 pm - attended by the director
thursday Mai 1st, 2013 at cinéma du Grütli in Geneva at 7:00 pm - attended by the director
friday Mai 9th, 2013 at Kino Kunstmuseum in Bern at 6:30 pm - attended by the director
saturday Mai 10th, 2013 at Kino Kunstmuseum in Bern at 4:30 pm
thursday Mai 15th, 2013 at Kino Kunstmuseum in Bern at 6:30 pm
A film by : Dominique de Rivaz
Image and sound : Dmitrij Leltschuk & Dominique de Rivaz
Editing : Prune Jaillet
Narrator : Anna Martinella
Writer : Dominique de Rivaz
Script consultant: Prune Jaillet & Jan Peters
Producer : Heinz Dill
Additional camera : Olivier Kunz
Sound editing and mix : Peter von Siebenthal
Colorgrading : Christoph Walther
Music :
"Mémoire Eternelle Office des Funérailles" by the monastery choir of Chevetogne, Belgium
Spinning Jenny by Guy Klucevsek
Sea of Reeds by Accordion Tribe
Liturgical music by the monastery choir of Solovki, Arkhangelsk
Additional music score : Jonas Fischer
Sound studio : Projektstudio GmbH, Bern
Online postproduction : Trinipix, Bern
Music recorded at : Tonstudio Spiez, Lukas Zaugg
Graphic designer : Peter Scholl
Offline sound studio : Studio X Berlin, Alexander Semrow
Producer : Heinz Dill
In coproduction with :
RTS, Radio Télévision Suisse
Unité documentaire, Irène Challand and Gaspard Lamunière
With the support of :
Cinéforom and Loterie Romande
Pro cinéma Bern - Direction de l'instruction publique du canton de Berne, Office de la culture
Salon du livre non/fiction Moscou 2013
