In 46 minutes, Henry Colomer offers a journey through the Belle Époque to the 1930s, pivoting on the Great War. With an audacious personal reading of British, French, German and Italian film archives, he stays close to faces and bodies, the breath of wind and life, light, glances, smiles and the daily life of those decades marked by tragedy.
It is an exquisite and heartbreaking history of “ordinary things”, without a word of commentary, told through the grace of editing and an original symphonic score composed by Jacopo Baboni Schilingi. Its guiding thread—fabrics and their symbolic markings, flags, banners and uniforms—may seem unexpected. Trust Henry Colomer’s poetic genius and historical knowledge: the film is superb!
Sous les drapeaux, 15 February at 12.25 a.m. on Arte.
[Only the notice concerning Sous les drapeaux is translated; unrelated television and radio listings on the same archived page are excluded.]