Presented in March last year, a "work in progress" version of 'Out of Darkness' by Mary Jimenez and Bénédicte Liénard was revealed for the first time to the Liège public at Théâtre de Liège.
The image and sound performance already engaged the audience in a reflection about the reality of migratory flows, in particular on the delicate funeral duty, without judgment or culpability, but carefully shaped with conviction and frankness. The filmmakers offer us the beauty worthy of their images, miles away from the sensational voyeurism of television programmes. The committed interpretation of a text shaped as a travel journal tells the trust built with the migrants, the vain anger and the sobriety sadness uses to cover itself when drowning in sorrow. In this final presentation, a new story is added. The story of a shipwreck on the Tunisian coast, as well as the testimonies of the mothers of the missing, whose unspoken pain is embraced by the voice of the soprano Noma Omran. The two filmmakers take the stage with humanity and finesse, to make it the place of remembrance, to expose the contradiction of European migration policies and the demonstration of the cruelty of the externalization of borders. They set rightly and poetically the plea of the forgotten.
The final version will be performed from 8th to 12th October in Salle de l'Oeil Vert at Théâtre de Liège. The presentation on 11th October is part of the programme of the cycle of events and conferences 'Corps Migrants: récits et présences' organised by University of Liège which gathers creatives, researchers, and people engaged in non-governmental organisations around the theme of migration, in reverse to the usual rhetoric. The performance will be followed by a discussion with Édith BERTHOLET (Théâtre de Liège), Grégory CORMANN (ULiège – Traverses), Amanda Caroline DA SILVA (ULiège –CEDEM), Maud HAGELSTEIN (ULiège – Traverses), Jérémy HAMERS (ULiège – Traverses).
