BOX FISH PRODUCTIONS
presents
EDEN TRIBAL
A film by Mathilde Lefort & Martin Jayet
52 min - France - 2020
SYNOPSIS
New Caledonia, October 2018. In the lead-up to the country’s independence referendum, a Kanak woman fights to preserve her culture, as well as the future of her tribe, Vieux-Touho.
This documentary goes beyond dressing her portrait. It also tells the story of a tribe and its members, as seen through the eyes of her soon-to-be chief: Maggy Thyem.
Is this community ready to welcome a woman as head of its tribe? Filmed during the referendum, EDEN TRIBAL follows the daily tribulations of the Vieux-Touho clans, as they are faced with the need to transfer their customs in order to survive. The group also tackles social pressure and the ghosts of colonization.
In their fight for a better future, their only way to shape their new geography and solve this ancestral conflict is to deal with both present and past issues.
MAIN CREW
Writers and Directors Martin Jayet & Mathilde Lefort
Directors of Photography Thomas Brémond & Thomas Favel
Chief Picture Editor Audrey Maurion
Music Composer Fabien Bourlier
Produced by Eve Pajot-Brémond
Box Fish productions
With the support of :
CNC, Ministère de la Culture, Région Normandie and New-Caledonia, Scam Brouillon d’un rêve, SACEM, Procirep-Angoa and ERAMET - SLN group
DIRECTORS STATEMENT
This project was born out of necessity. We felt the need to come back to New Caledonia and to direct our first film, the year of the independence referendum.
Our adventure started after meeting Maggy, with whom we developed deep bonds behind the camera. She understood our project and our approach and generously accepted to let us into her life. What fascinated us in Maggy is her commitment to her cause, as well as her strong will. Her political message is simple, accessible, and goes well beyond the limits of her tribe. It resonated with some of our own questions about western society’s values. Kanak’s philosophy is hard to translate, hard to capture. We were confronted with a slower pace of life, a rhythm that wasn’t ours. Crucial sequences to our film’s narrative were often pushed back to tomorrow, then to a week, and even to a month later. Life didn’t move as fast in the tribe, and nothing seemed to come to disrupt its harmony. Every day we were filming in this atmosphere of total stillness, following characters living in tune with the sun. But every day, we entered that little bit more in the intimacy. The film really took shape in the edit. Audrey, our editor, kept on insisting that our only way to interpret our footage with honesty. We had to try and understand the story, these images told us: “What are we seeing, how did we look at the work ?”. This was our crossing point, the moment where everything clicked into place. We realized that we had shared our character’s feelings, and captured a way of life that had amazed us. In the film, Kanak's life comes across as hard and beautiful at once. The simple acts of humanity we witnessed while shooting showed us a different perspective on the surrounding poverty. We learned about the importance of traditions in their community; traditions so heavy-handed sometimes they make progress difficult. But these customs also make Kanak who they are.
The strength of the characters of all tribe members and the beauty of the landscapes both irradiate in EDEN TRIBAL. Thomas Brémond and Thomas Favel, our two directors of photography, have been sensitive to this universe and translated it on screen arrestingly. You can really feel all the beauty present in the Kanak way of life in their footage, which really came into life during post-production. Our colorist Nicolas felt this deeply, a feeling which comes across in the film’s overall softness. We collaborated with Fabien Bourlier to work on music, which was a major factor in building our perspective on this community. We worked from every organic, almost diegetic sound elements, in order to compose electronic music for the soundtrack. This balance between the sonic pacts plays also a role in the film’s quality.
We are all very proud to have been able to release this film, which is as close as possible to what we are about as filmmakers. We would have never been able to go as far in this process without our producer’s great willpower. Eve Brémond gave us all the support to turn our film from dream to reality. EDEN TRIBAL is based on chance encounters. It has been a collaborative process, in which each of us put a small part of ourselves. From the Vieux-Touho tribe to Paris, everyone involved has believed in this UFO of a film. Everyone has understood that the existence of such a documentary is highly important to the plight of the Kanak people.