CP/ 2023
︎︎︎ Dirty Salt ︎︎︎
12-minute colour film shot in 4K minutes, Cape Verde
(- I have got salt on my fingers !
- This is what happens if you get to the dead sea.
- Water, I need some water !
- My friend Jenie said that’s exactly what happened to her.
- Did we decide ?
- O yeah it’s included in the price.)
In a desert landscape well known to travel agencies, European tourists on “all-inclusive” vacations discover the main attraction of this African country: a salt lake. Wandering between the grotesque and a thirst for adventure, these groups are guided through a spectacular environment they do not always truly see. As if switched off, they follow their guides from one vehicle to another. They stay together according to the languages they speak, choosing neither the activities they will do nor the places they will visit : the prepaid hotel decides for them.
This film explores how a certain form of tourism has replaced colonialism. Its purpose is to reveal the links between them by questioning our relationship to exoticism and the imaginations inherited from colonial history. The narrative unfolds simply, inspired by travel stories and myths of discovery.
The shoot took place at a unique tourist site: a former salt mine in Cape Verde that once operated during, and through slavery. For three days, I filmed the tourists, capturing their movements and their interactions with the site, and each evening I wrote the scenes based on the images recorded during the day. A central element of this work was the treatment of the characters. Rather than filming them through a documentary lens, I sought to give the protagonists a fictional dimension, transforming them into recurring and recognizable figures. Through the humor of repetition and a subtly comic perspective, I used cinematic storytelling techniques that draw the viewer into empathy.
The film’s aesthetic draws inspiration from advertising videos that sell a promise of exotic and disorienting adventure. Each shot is composed like a postcard image. This visual approach was essential to question how we perceive landscapes and the fantasies that the travel industry builds around them. Above all, this film aims to cast a sidelong, critical gaze upon contemporary tourism examining its mechanisms and its colonial roots through a cinematic lens.
