‘RAYMONDE CARASCO’

Raymonde Carasco (France, 1939-2009) visited Mexico 18 times between 1976 and 2001. These trips, in the company of Régis Hébraud - her husband but also her cameraman, sound recordist and editor – resulted in some 15 films on the Tarahumara Indians and their festivities, dances and rites. Following in the footsteps of Eisenstein and Artaud (“I wanted to see Artaud’s writing. To see with my own eyes what it is to write”), Carasco created in total freedom a cosmic and lyrical documentary ensemble, both poetic and experimental, that “owes nothing to anyone: not to visual ethnology, not to cinema, not to the academic world, not to any production house” (Nicole Brenez). A year after the retrospective devoted to Carasco during the L’Âge d'Or Festival at CINEMATEK, this programme looks back at the first and the last of Carasco’s films on the Tarahumaras.

Tarahumaras 78 – Raymonde Carasco (1979, 30', colour, 16mm, transferred to Beta)
Chronicle of a meeting between the Tarahumara Indians and a camera in search of a people with a name that means “feet that run”. The editing style is rhythmic, almost musical, evoking the gait, customs and postures of these people.   
 
La Despedida – Raymonde Carasco (2003, 53', colour, 16mm transferred to Beta)
La Despedida is the last film in the cycle La Fêlure du temps (2000–2003) that closes Raymonde Carasco’s work on the Tarahumaras. This five-part ensemble, devoted to the origins and disappearance of the Tarahumara culture, records the words of the last shaman of peyote. La Despedida is also Raymonde Carasco’s last film.

Prints: Cinémathèque de Toulouse.
 
Régis Hébraud will be at the Quartiers Latins bookshop on 23 January at 12 noon for a meeting  with  Aristide Bianchi to discuss Raymonde Carasco’s book Dans le bleu du ciel - Carnets Tarahumaras (1976-2001), followed at 3:00 PM by a discussion with Sami El Hage on Raymonde Carasco and Antonin Artaud. Sunday 24 January at 8:00 PM, Régis Hébraud will introduce a screening at the Buktapaktop of the film Julien – Portrait d'un voyant (Raymonde Carasco, 1981, 75').