The Day Night ( Jour de Nuit )

The Day Night (DVD) (*)

~~$39.99~~ $33.97

Original Title: Jour de Nuit
Screened, competed or awarded at:
Other Film Festival Awards

Language Selections:
English ( Subtitles )
French ( Dolby Digital Stereo )
German ( Dolby Digital Stereo )

Product Origin/Format:
Switzerland ( PAL/Region 0 )

Running Time:
81 min

Aspect Ratio:
Fullscreen

Special Features:
Interactive Menu
Scene Access

Movie filmed in 2000 and produced in:
Switzerland ( Germany, Central Europe )

Directed By:
Dieter Fahrer
Bernhard Nick

Written By:
Dieter Fahrer

Actors:
Peter Bergman ..... Himself
Monie Meziane ..... Herself
Bruno Netter ..... Himself

Synopsis:

Three individuals from different backgrounds discuss the nature of vision from strikingly different perspectives in this Swiss documentary. Peter Berman is a professional actor who has developed a tumor that has severely impacted his sight; he discusses his condition, and how it has affected his perceptions and his craft. Monie Neziane is a young woman who has gone blind; she speaks of her memories of light and images and how blindness has led her to a new way of seeing. And Bruno Netter, an artist who paints landscapes in the Swiss countryside, whose sense of light, shadow, and color are the basis of his work, explains how creating a painting is much more than a matter of seeing with one's eyes.

He sets his easel up towards the end of the valley near the waterfall, to linger, observe and paint. Just to be there, in the power of natural light. His house, the centre of his existence and his hearth in the winter months, stands at the edge of the forest. Paris, 'Ville lumière'. A man. A woman. Both actors. Both blind. Blind in a blinding-dazzling world. Hearing in darkness. Seeing in darkness. Keeping alert. A play of shadowy figures emerges from the darkness towards the light, into the light: a playing child that knows only the present and in it recognises the wonderful 'now' in which all things exist. A film about light, seeing and perception. 'The first light of this film sparkles in the water that a boat is gently cutting through. As a myriad of dancing reflections, it is fragile, intangible and mysterious. Then a large door opens, through which an enormous mass of light invades the space. But darkness quickly mingles with this enigmatic opening of a narrative. Three faces, three bodies - which bulbs of white light illuminate in bursts - pierce the night of a tightrope walkers' show (in Italy).
JOUR DE NUIT is the multiple story of forms of light as perceived by people who see light and who work with it. The painter who sets up his easel in a grandiose landscape in the Bernese Oberland (in Switzerland), the passengers on a boat gliding in semi-darkness along the Canal Saint Martin (in Paris), are searching for rays of light to give volume to the colours and consistency to the materials.

The film's intention is rendered more complex by the presence of people who cannot see or whose blindness is degenerative. There is this couple of actors who tell of the night they can see, a mother who is painting with her sighted child - a beautiful scene in which a shared creative activity transcends the handicaps. Thus gradually JOUR DE NUIT weaves a network of connections between the various, seemingly-disparate fragments, with which the film has a field day. This film is thirsty for the flavours of the world, its know-how (the felt boots), its culture (the theatre) and its voices (the characters' sober comments). Brightdark, day-night, hot-cold, summer-winter and indoor-outdoor are the pairs that the film-makers are clever enough to portray without oversimplifying. On the contrary, the associative and digressive pairs suggest a meditation about our perceptions, which turn us into solitary yet interdependent beings. Solitary like the blind beggar woman in the Paris metro who repeats in an endless litany 'for my children'. Interdependent like all the people who, at the end of the film, leave the foreground to disappear together in the blinding light. Without being oversymbolic or taking the metaphors too far, the directors then complete as lay priests a film about a secular communion imbued with spirituality.

This product was added to our catalog on Wednesday 06 October, 2010.