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Saarbrucken

17.Internationales Festival
Zeichen Der Nacht
(Signes de Nuit)

in Berlin
Germany

JAN 18 - 21, 2019

 
Acud Kino
Acud Kino
Acud Kino
 
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freengger

 

International Competition
Documentary
# 7
Monday 21, January 2019 / 6 pm
Lichtblick-Kino
Berlin /
Germany

 

The Time of Forest
Le temps des forêts  

The Time of the Forest

 

BERLIN PREMIERE

 


François-Xavier Drouet
France
2018 | 1:43:00

A tree is a tree is a forest. And a forest is nature. A walk in the woods is the epitome of recreation and contemplation for most people. But in his film Le Temps des Forêts, François-Xavier Drouet tells a different forest story. One of tree deserts, monoculture, pesticides and other poisons, production, profitability, and social injustice. The director takes us on a trip to central France, the west coast, Burgundy and the Vosges mountains. He starts out on the Millevaches high plateau in Limousin. This plateau is a 70% afforested region. However, this forest is a green desert - a mere cultivation area for the wood industry. Douglas firs rise in disciplined rows hectare after hectare.

Monoculture instead of biodiversity prevails: the forest is only there to be harvested. Giant machines that look like metal monsters fell the fir trees every few minutes, hectares of surfaces are cleared, rivers and streams devastated and poisoned. The destroyed wasteland finally receives the next generation of Douglas firs. Pesticides will help them grow faster in the soil, which is worn out by the monoculture. In his film, François-Xavier Drouet allows many people to express their views, people who work in and with the forest. People who benefit from the forest. But also people who prefer to cultivate their forests in a sustainable way. A forester describes the constantly worsening working conditions that are tightened by the “Office national des forêts” (ONF) in favour of profit and profitability. He talks about the countless suicides of forestry workers who cracked because of inhuman conditions.

Finally, the film accompanies many forestry workers to a demonstration in front of the ONF headquarters. This is when it becomes clear that the French forest and wood business has taken on proportions that go far beyond anything imaginable. Images of huge deforested areas, nightmarishly huge machines felling tree trunks like matchsticks and building them up into huge piles, images of a sawmill factory that processes as much wood in a day as a small family sawmill in a year... These pictures are not from faraway Canada or China, they are from our neighbouring country, France. This film is a discovery because it tells a story about the forest we have not yet heard and seen.





 
 

 

 

 

 

 

January 18 - 21, 2019

An international jury overview the sections of short films coming from all over the world. We prefer documentaries which succeed in representing the complexity of reality and discover in a new way its sensible and perturbing aspects on the same time accentuating the ambivalent and enigmatic status of reality in avoiding sterotypes and simplifing conclusions.


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Festival international SIGNES DE NUIT - 18, rue Budé 75004 Paris - France - Tel : +33 (0) 1 40 46 92 25 - +33 (0) 6 84 40 84 38 - cood.int@signesdenuit.com