Shown in Compétition #4.
Synopsis
Mountains are falling, and there’s nothing we can do about it. And even if we have the means to rise to their height to admire them, to surpass those inaccessible peaks where many explorers lost their lives trying to gain the privilege of overcoming them, the mountains will continue to fall as they continue to rise. If Mount Blanc falls, it also rises.
Texte du comité de sélection
A change of rhythm compared to Jacques Perconte’s previous films, the camera goes towards detail, moving horizontally and vertically in a global image, that of Mont Blanc. Through digital abstraction, Jacques Perconte pushes our perception of the landscape to higher levels.
Translation made by the translator www.DeepL.com/Translator
– R.G.
Texte d'accompagnement
Are we the last to see the peaks of Mont Blanc? The heat of the summers and the mild winters have a lot to do with the rock falls, which have multiplied over the last twenty years or so. The mountains are collapsing. If this is a sign of climate change, it is also a sign of our attachment to the landscape, which we would like to be able to classify as a heritage site.
The Mont Blanc massif is not ours, the mountain is a state, it is a moment, it wasn’t, and it will change in any case. The problem here would be that of speed. Because the balance of these peaks defying the void, the longevity of these glaciers is only our point of view. On the scale of the movement of the planet, it’s a vibration.
Mountains are falling, we can’t help it. And even if we have the means to rise to their height to admire them, to surpass those inaccessible peaks where many explorers lost their lives trying to gain the privilege of overcoming them, the mountains will continue to fall as they continue to rise. If Mont Blanc falls, it also rises.
– Jacques Perconte
Can you tell me about the starting point of Avant l’effondrement du Mont Blanc ? In what context was your film made?
The majority of the images of Avant l’effondrement du Mont Blanc were shot in April 2020 in an airplane around Mont Blanc. The film includes of course an ecological dimension. In fact, I have friends who do mountain climbing and who are aware of the effects of global warming on this environment, and especially the eternal melting of snow that leads to frequent rock falls and landslides.
Your film presents many different types of images. What was your creative process? What techniques and materials did you use in its conception?
The images were captured from an airplane, the one we see a moment in the video. We can also see images of old maps of the massif. I also proceeded to reuse images found on the internet, avalanches in particular. These maps have nothing to do with the Mont-Blanc, nor even with the Alps, they are images of an American massif. It is rare that in my work I do such precise research, but I had a very clear idea of what I was expecting. During the editing process, I digitally transformed the images by letting the movement vectors appear. These are the fine black lines that appear at a certain point. Through these transformations, the film tends towards a form of abstraction. I also worked on colors, especially white and blue which are omnipresent in high mountains. In the plane, I chose to shoot the images in slow motion so that I could accelerate them later. That’s what gives this frenetic side to certain moments. I wanted to show the graph of the world’s movement, which we only feel when a cataclysm takes place.
Can you tell me about the title of the film? Can we hear an ecological insurrection, particularly with the melting of the glaciers and their disappearance? In this sense, can your film be likened to collapsology, a discourse that also includes the notion of collapse?
There is no fatalism in me regarding the ecological situation. The Collapse I’m talking about is not limited to collapsological theories, and I’ve always wanted to keep my distance from this thought of the end of the world. On the contrary, it is a natural phenomenon. The perception that we have of this idea of collapse is human, we have only very recently noticed the action that we are taking on our environment. The anthropocene. Outside nature evolves beyond good and evil. Of course the melting of the permafrost is only accelerating. Paradoxically, global warming is causing the size of mountains to decrease, while plate tectonics is helping them to grow. Maybe what leads to this collapsing vision is the last part of the film. That said, originally, a text accompanied the images of the film, and there was no question of ending the film this way.