For Claude Levi-Strauss native people are so well connected to the ecosystems that they are living in, that they can help us in stopping our society’s ecological disorders. The so-called ”primitives” were and are, in fact, so capable of living in harmony with the world, that they possess some keys of life that we have lost . Can’t we hear the voice of the people of the forest, of the Inuits, of the native populations?

Gilles Vuillard’s films connect with these questions, but his films have a part of mystery. Direct explanation is not the chosen path. Cinema must show the poetical beauty in such way, that the meaning is not invasive, a film is like the visible part of an iceberg — what makes it float is hidden.

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We have to call cinema the analogical technique that requires film. Video is a new practice, which still is searching its own language, it is a technique in mutation. Using film is a choice. Film is a media which is able to survive time. It is dynamic, it is moving, it is tangible, as a great part of the phenomenon that can be touched.

Discernment is to first choose a subject which is singular and to treat it with sobriety. Films filled with action are mostly empty. Films full of ideas are active. The action is making the mind jump, impressions becoming concepts. If the emotions are too simple, the mind will be lulled sleep, but even if the film is abstract, if it is very well done, the flux of emotion will be powerful.

The Odyssey of the Look is a gallery of portraits of people and places. The approach is anthropological, but at some point quite neutral. The idea is not to explain, not to import any poor anthropocentric views, and not to make a documentary, but a document of present time in several very isolated places, to valorize the invisible.

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Gilles Vuillard was living in Paris, New York, Berlin. Those places are intensive, but at some points similar. The jail of the banal, the certitude of predictable facts, objects and ways of being are the limits of our mono-cultural way of life.

The adventure is nonexistent anymore in our societies. When Gilles was filming alone in Kulusuk (east Greenland) a polar bear could have killed him.

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In Transylvania, in Caucasus, the forest contained some dangerous wild animals. The ways of life in such regions are unique and strong whilst connecting with unpredictable surroundings. Gilles Vuillard is filming in 16mm. In such places it makes sense: unique places, distinct people, a reel cinematographic technique. The film revolves as the Earth of Galileo, as the wild animal, as the hunter.

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Images from: The Odyssey of the Look

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