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Conversation nord-sud, Daney / Sanbar
During the Gulf War, Serge Daney wrote that conversation—what he called “a typically Franco-Arab art”—could no longer take place between him and his Arab friends. Saddened by this realisation, an opportunity was created to offer him a space, both real and cinematic, in which this interrupted dialogue might be rekindled.
The choice of his interlocutor was immediately obvious: Elias Sanbar, a Palestinian historian, editor of the journal Études palestiniennes, and collector of images—an exile who archives the memory of his people: press photographs, family albums, postcards, and more. For Sanbar, the image serves as proof of his identity. Daney spent most of his life watching films, yet always refused to keep still images. On both sides, there was a strong desire to confront these two attitudes toward the image and to make of them, in a way, a parable of North-South relations.