Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-4hhp2 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-06-11T11:55:24.076Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
This chapter is part of a book that is no longer available to purchase from Cambridge Core

6 - Edge

Alison J. Murray Levine
Affiliation:
University of Virginia
Get access

Summary

They spoke to me of people, and humanity. But I've never seen people, or humanity. I've seen various people, astonishingly dissimilar, Each separated from the next by an unpeopled space.

—Fernando Pessoa, “They spoke to me of people, and of humanity,” quoted in La Permanence (Alice Diop, 2016)

All Europeans have their systems for the centralization of fingerprints in order to know where the man will arrive and when he will go. So the Europeans have their techniques and we have our techniques to hide our fingerprints. If it was possible to cut this one and throw it and bring another hand, I would do that. But it's not possible. So I just burn my hands.

—Anonymous migrants, Qu'ils reposent en révolte (Sylvain George, 2011)

Black screen. Silence. Image and sound cut in, abruptly. A black-andwhite shot in close-up on a pair of hands. The torso faces the camera. It is wearing a puffy winter coat that covers the arms up to the wrists. The bright whites of jacket, fingernails, fingertips blaze against saturated black shadows that nestle in armholes and blanket the backs of the hands. The right hand holds a disposable plastic razor, also black, and uses the blade to slice into the skin of the upturned fingertips on the left hand. With a gentle rocking motion, the hand rolls the blade across the identificatory surface of its partner again and again, slicing into skin without drawing blood. Several voices murmur, offscreen, one perhaps belonging to the cutting hand's owner, perhaps to an onlooker: “Ah, là là. Ah, là là.” The camera cuts to extreme close-up, five shots in all, for a full 60 seconds of razor against fingertip. Then, faces and words, comments such as those above by young men explaining their attempts to evade fingerprint identification by European authorities. After another black shot, another series of close-ups focuses on fire, metal wires holding screws into the fire, and fingers pressing down on the hot screws. “I say it's our tradition,” says a voice. “They did it to our grandfathers. We are not going to wait for someone else to do it. We burn ourselves.” Then, an extreme close-up of fingers, crisscrossed by the white lines of fresh burn marks that will make the individual impossible to identify in any database.

Type
Chapter
Information
Vivre Ici
Space, Place, and Experience in Contemporary French Documentary
, pp. 161 - 188
Publisher: Liverpool University Press
Print publication year: 2018

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×