Our Last
Sonata
By Donatella Bernardi and Rudy Decelière
With Emmanuel DuPasquier, 2012, 56‘ video HD
A trip and a lecture, from Sarajevo to Jerusalem.
Three protagonists: a beard, a head of hair and a hat. A word performed for the camera, tableaux-images and inner tubes. From its 114th to its 1st Sura, the Koran is read by the side of the road, in a tent, a bar, a shopping mall entrance, in front of a donkey, at sea, on a bus, a night train or plane in flight. How is one to understand the French translation of the sacred text that founded the Arab tongue, the language of God? Should one even try to interpret the Koran and try to link it to the landscape contexts? Though it’s about living a book and reading it, encouraged and supported by camera and mic, it’s also a question of researching this geographic and cultural frontier between West and East—distinctions and cross references made between the three monotheisms, from the appropriation of these problems by three people taking turns being the patriarch, the woman, and the Jew or even Santa Claus, the rebel girl and the young man. With all the efforts this required, recorded on film, it is definitely a question of two parallel crosÂsings—earth and text—whose protagonists invariably seek the point of contact, God knows where.
Background and below pictures: Our Last Sonata's visual documentation and stills. Black and white polaroids: Rudy Decelière, color photos: Donatella Bernardi, Rudy Decelière and Emmanuel DuPasquier.
