Sons and Daughters of Vietnam

"Disparèt pran-y," says the Creole.
Disappearance, enamored.
The illusion turned into allusion, the body lying on time, lé zétwal melted into the blood of the piébwa, scattered in dreams weighed by hands awaiting, stirring the depths: in a rupture of lineage, even in the languages gathered by the roots in the paths.
Traps.
The one, and moons.
The sister of the flamboyant is the glyceria. He spins and unravels between Vietnam and Martinique. If one is present for the other, each is also a form of disappearance. When Arlette Pacquit directs Sons and Daughters of Vietnam, she names a history buried within a history, of Caribbean soldiers sent in the name of France to suppress the independent forces of the ill-fated Indochina. Several will desert the army and join the Viet Minh. They will also bind themselves to the country through love. There will be children, woven by the woods of both lands. Pacquit had imagined – echoing the meditated image of a flamboyant overlooking Vietnamese waters – the image of a flowering glyceria in Matinik. "The place of the identical is sometimes an illusion," says the director. The image arrived too late, so the film retains its memory. It is also a way of accepting that "this water seems to drift, 'chayé' us elsewhere."

Nathanaël
Poet, essayist and translator

To be published in 2024
Andidan–cinémas intimes d'Arlette Pacquit.
Conversations entre Arlette Pacquit et Nathanaël