This is a fifteen minute animated short by Bastien Dubois. Dubois has made three earlier short animation. One of these, Madagascar, a Journey Diary / Madagascar, carnet de voyage (2010), was nominated for an Academy Award as was this title. The earlier animation addressed cultural practice. However, this most recent work dramatises a personal issue for Dubois over which he has struggled for ten years before embodying it in this title.
The animated images are accompanied by actual voices which recount memories and events which he has investigated and puzzled over since his early years. Hi grandfather served in the French Army when it was attempting to suppress the National Liberation Struggle of the Algerian people. As is the case with ex-military with traumatic memories his grandfather always deflected or ignored his questions, ‘what he did in the war’. In trying to establish what was involved Dubois studied the war and the actions of the French soldiers. This was a classic example of brutal and violent action against Algerians, both armed fighters and civilians. Towards the end of the animation we learn of a moment when the grandfather’s guard dropped and a hint emerged of his involvement.
The images in this work render, often literally how violent was the war. The voices, including Dubois himself, and friends family, interpret and comment upon these images. Whilst in one way the animation record what the French perpetrated in Algeria in another way it examines the impact on men like the grandfather who were called to carry out what must have been war crimes. This gives the animation and it’s voices a two-fold address to the colonial violence which continues against other people to this day.
The animation is featured on the Indy Film Library, a site dedicated to short films. There is a link to Souvenir Souvenir, which is on YouTube. There is also an article on the animation by the editor. He draws out some of the important political aspects of the work. He also draws parallels with the contemporary colonial violence; including that carried out against the Palestinian people by the Zionist regime.
I was impressed with the animated short and stimulated by the editor’s article. He does refer to ‘White Western’ values; there is some truth in such an assertions but it needs to be related to the more fundamentals of class in a capitalist world. In a way the working class recruits of the French army were as much victims of French colonialism as the Algerian people imprisoned, tortured and murdered in the colonial war. An important merit of Dubois’ film is that it brings out both these aspects.
Third Cinema revisited 