THE NINE LAKH STARS

Une rencontre en plein désert du Rajasthan ressuscite dans la mémoire de la réalisatrice Loubna Régragui les images d’un film, Duvidha, réalisé par le cinéaste indien Mani Kaul en 1973. Qui est celle dont le visage s’inscrit dans la persistance d’une image cinématographique ?

« Loubna Régragui is above all a film preservationist who also makes films. One needs to put it like that to understand some of the energies that animate The Nine Lakh Stars, which was the search for acceptable analogue elements of Mani Kaul’s high-modernist masterpiece Duvidha (1973) whose soul, she thinks, was erased by its digital mastering. Which is an interesting question to ponder apropos of a film that tells the story of a ghost, who incarnates a young bride’s absent husband… Is the digital the ghost of the analogue?While Kaul passed away a decade ago, there are still some witnesses for Régragui to interview about Duvidha’s creation and the particularities of Kaul’s art. This makes The Nine Lakh Stars three things at once: a treatise on the ethics of preservation, a pars pro toto portrayal of a historical film giant, and a meditation on the various meanings of a key work of world cinema. » (Olaf Möller, IFFR – International Film Festival Rotterdam).