Synopsis
By chance, Henri-François Imbert finds himself in possession of a Super 8 film left unfinished in a camera given to him by his girlfriend after a trip to Belfast. The film dates back a dozen years and shows an unknown family having fun on the beach. He decides to go to Northern Ireland to find these people and return the film to them.
A word from Tënk
With an almost disconcerting quiet strength, without the slightest forcing, A Beach Near Belfast deploys a cinema that borrows from the romantic and even from the romanticism. It is also a breathless film-investigation, as much by the quest - to find the protagonists of the found images - as by the investigation in the images where clues are found (to identify the beach, the people…). We are also in the presence of a fascinating and moving film-essay. In less than 40 minutes, Henri-François Imbert tells us almost everything that documentary can be (and not what it should be): starting from reality to reformulate it with the means of cinema, filming in an act of trust without knowing what we are going to discover, the disposition to encounters, formidable motors and cinematographic fuels. And above all, without a doubt: filming is a way to fight against disappearance itself.
Arnaud Hée
Programmer, teacher and critic
