Before the Deluge

Moving portrait of the small community of Uranium City, Saskatchewan; assemblage of 16mm and digital images, populated by ghost mines and archives slumbering at the bottom of Lake Athabasca; Before the Deluge lets its camera drift through an impenetrable landscape, revealing the traces left by the exploitation of a land treated as pure commodity — traces etched into the bodies and memories of those who remain. Imprints that crystallize on the image even as they transform into a militant kaleidoscope.

Jean-Jacques Martinod blends, without hierarchy, formal exploration and documentary process in a film that draws as much from the codes of experimental cinema as from the travelogue. Uranium City emerges as yet another victim of Canada’s violent tradition of resource extraction at the expense of Indigenous peoples — a postcard of colonialism, past and present. A community haunted by a radioactive metal. A local economy ravaged by a mercantile philosophy. An isolated and forgotten town. We swim, we dive, and insidiously, as time stretches, we seem to drown in it.

A political and poetic portrait, anchored in reality before sinking into the depths of dream.

Samuel Terry Pitre
Filmmaker and member of VISIONS