Les hommes du port
Director Alain Tanner
Countries Switzerland, France
Duration 64 min
Synopsis
"I was 20 years old. I was determined to escape settled life. I left for Genoa to work in a marine company hoping, of course, to embark on a ship one day. It was my first contact with the working world, with seafaring men and ports. I returned to Genoa for the first time some 40 years later. For me, this huge port represents a place of work rather than the romantic site it is attributed to be in stories. In fact, I think of it as a stronghold of the working world as reflected in the words of the dockers, for whom the port is devoid of any exotic notion. The film takes up past traces of a would-be sailor in an attempt to assuage the sense of unfulfilment affecting the life of a true 'cinéaste'. It expresses the past by means of the present, blending together the imagined and the real world." (Alain Tanner)
"I was 20 years old. I was determined to escape settled life. I left for Genoa to work in a marine company hoping, of course, to embark on a ship one day. It was my first contact with the working world, with seafaring men and ports. I returned to Genoa for the first time some 40 years later. For me, this huge port represents a place of work rather than the romantic site it is attributed to be in stories. In fact, I think of it as a stronghold of the working world as reflected in the words of the dockers, for whom the port is devoid of any exotic notion. The film takes up past traces of a would-be sailor in an attempt to assuage the sense of unfulfilment affecting the life of a true 'cinéaste'. It expresses the past by means of the present, blending together the imagined and the real world." (Alain Tanner)