Confluences

CONFLUENCES - Emerillon of French Guiana 

The Emerillon constitute a very small ethnic group living in the interiour of French Guiana, a French overseas department. In the 1950s, they counted only around 50, but they have managed to reverse the situation and today they are about 400.

CONFLUENCES is a film, not about THE Emerillon in general, but about 3-4 young Emerillon who are struggling in each their ways to maintain their sense of being Emerillon as well as the liberty that living in and off the forest provides them, while tangling with their French citizenship and the opportunities that it might offer them.

While describing the Emerillon's current situation, the film also reflects the everyday, very down-to-earth manner that anthropology comes about, the preconceptions that turn out wrong, the discoveries, the small errors of interpretation, the pleasure, the beauty - of landscapes, skillful hands, of the fish, etc. - the friendships that emerge and mainly, how the whole field gradually opens up to the anthropologist. The contingency and processuality of it all.

Synopsis

Like forceful omens, scientific reports have hitherto depicted the Amerindian Emerillon of French Guiana as cultureless and doomed to disappear. With this film, a Danish anthropologist proposes to defy these negative images of the Emerillon, by the same token delving into their world. Several young Emerillon take up the challenge, and through their resourceful and often stumbling efforts to maintain a life in the forest while profiting from their status as French citizens, they present another version of what being Emerillon is all about.

We follow them through communal fishing trips, forest foraging, artistic creativity, French schooling and municipal elections, discovering how they, always with humour, manage to bridge the gaps and make a whole out of their lives.

Emerges a rare, profoundly generous and non-ethnocentric discourse, one that asserts that to feel Emerillon does not necessarily imply feeling fundamentally different from others.

Perle Møhl

Director’s Bio-filmography

Perle MØHL
• born March 26, 1960 in Copenhagen, Denmark.

Anthropologist and documentary filmmaker
Independent researcher (AnthropE), member of Ateliers Varan since 1992

Lives in France with her husband and son

• education and degrees
2005 PhD in Anthropology, University of Copenhagen, Denmark.
1994 M.A. in Anthropology, University of Copenhagen, Denmark.
1986-88 Documentary training, Ateliers VARAN, Paris.
1986 Bachelor in Ethnography and Social Anthropology, University of Aarhus, Denmark.
1978-81 Studies in medicine, University of Copenhagen.

•some publications
Omens and Effect: Divergent Perspectives on Emerillon Past, Present and Future. Museum Tusculanum Press (forthcoming), 351 pp.
Village Voices - Coexistence and Communication in a Rural Community in Central France, Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press 1997, 213 pp.

•some films
1994 Ainsi va la terre - l'histoire d'un remembrement dans le Berry, France, 58', video, co-direction and -camera, Yumi Productions/ARTE. Mention Spéciale du Jury, Cinéma du Réel 1994, broadcast on ARTE 1994 and 1998. English version: Losing Ground (eng. subtitles).
1988 Limfjordsfisker. Denmark, 26\', video, co-direction, camera and editing, 3rd Prize at the 15th International Film Festival of Santarem, 1989.
1986 L'ombre et l'humidité. France, 18', video, direction and camera.