ATLANTIDE HOTEL

written and directed by: Jean Charruyer

Production: Horya Films

Theme: Contemporary Questions / History / Colonization

Format: 1x90'

Synopsis: Frontier post of Matamaya, Nigeria, 1940 : "We stopped to take a moment’s rest. That’s when an old lady appeared on the road, black, with sandles on her feet, on her head a basket and a bundle of logs. When she arrived within a few metres of us she stopped, took off her sandals, and put them on her head. Then she passed by us, bowing her head. A few steps further on she stopped to put her sandals back on her feet and carried on. We were shocked by this gesture symbolic of the submission of the black people to the white. For a few moments we were silent, and then we carried on without mentioning it ".

My father, administrative officer in the colonial army, told this story among many others he remembered. Taking off from his memories, his photographs, archive documents and contemporary footage shot in the real locations the film invites the spectator on a journey which will lead us fro, Indochina to black Africa through the eyes of a young colonial officer who, like many of his comrades at the time, did not dream of conquest nor of epic adventure, but only of seeing these distant lands, a tiny fragment of Atlantis. Disciplined and conscientious soldier, the accomplishment of his administrative tasks brought him the recognition of his superiors who thought of him as a perfect agent of French colonisation. He received three medals for this achievement. Today these trophies force us to ask questions. How is it that we should look at the question of colonialism ? From Hanoi to Saint-Louis in Sénégal via Niamey and Yaoundé… I questioned the surviving witnesses and the children of these witnesses. I don’t aim to tell the story of colonialism, still less to repeat colonial cliches, but more to open up questions in using the point of view of that era as a point of departure, in placing the events in their context.