SHARING AND SAFEGUARDING
NOT INCOMPATIBLE
It’s Thursday night and Documentary Film Week in Riberac. As the autumn rain pours
down the cheerful crowds pile into the warm Max Linder Cinema. Before the film begins
some aficionados have a few things to say:
“We’ve seen the film before, we’ve already seen the cave and we’ve come back to
see Gilbert again; he’s stolen our hearts!”
Gilbert, although close to tears, comes out with one of those witty remarks that
prove just how intelligent he is:
“The cave’s nice, so’s the guide!”
After the film everyone is clamouring for his photo, an autograph and his phone
number. He complies, especially when it’s a lady who comes and gives him a big kiss
and goes away enchanted.
The next day, here we all are again at the Pôle Internationale de la Préhistoire
in Les Eyzies, where the film is being shown for the third time for those of you
who couldn’t get in in the spring. Without further ado, the prehistorian Jacques
Buisson-Catil, who has just been appointed manager at the PIP, recalls his fascination
a few days earlier when Gilbert showed him round Bernifal: a cave he had already
visited and appreciated 20 years before. A vivid memory that he shares with others.
A lady in the audience promptly speaks up:
“I visited the cave when I was a child and it gave me the desire to become a prehistorian.”
And while I am talking about the natural talent Gilbert has for enthusing children
with his cave, Isabelle Petitfils, a fieldtrip organizer in Cladech, asks:
“Mr. Pémendrant, would you be willing to train guides for other sites?”
Gilbert smiles and says:
“As long as there are as many photos and hugs after the visit!”
Because that’s how it goes: at Bernifal, when the visit’s over everyone takes a
photo of him and gives him a big hug. It’s as if they want to take a bit of him
home with them after the dreamlike experience shared in the tranquility of his beautiful
painted cave.
“But why couldn’t the owners keep their caves and go on looking after them?”
Christine Laurent, owner of Miremont Château, has raised a question of prime importance.
It is a fact (as Gilbert emphasizes at the end of the film) that since the new law
on preventative archeology came out in 2001, if archaeological remains are discovered
on personally-owned property – a monument, a cave, etc. – they are automatically
turned over to the local authorities or they become state property if the former
do not wish to include them in their patrimony.
Initially, this law set out to protect World Heritage Sites, giving top priority
to preservation and demanding that researchers take infinite precautions and leave
the site as unharmed as possible. However, as Jacques Buisson-Catil himself quite
rightly points out, it may not be up to European legislation requirements, since
the owner receives no compensation – except for the inconvenience caused when accessing
the site. The question of “damage incurred” may quite well be raised when the next
major archaeological find is revealed.
Calmly, with mutual respect, the audience were able to broach the all-important
issue: the safeguarding of World Heritage Sites. That’s what the film is all about.
It isn’t a namby-pamby documentary about a farmer and his cave; it’s the chance
to share a unique and touching experience - precisely because nothing has been touched
and tampered with.
LE DERNIER PAYSAN PRÉHISTORIEN
(The Last Farmer-cum-Prehistorian)
in the official selection at the eleventh
AMIENS FESTIVAL OF ARCHAEOLOGICAL FILMS
What an honour! To be chosen for the official selection at the Festival du Film
d’Archéologie in Amiens, Picardy, the cradle of prehistoric archaeology! We were
proud as peacocks. We’d caught the early morning train from Brive to Amiens on Friday,
13 April, with Gilbert Pémendrant by our sides. He was revelling in every single
second. The last time he’d taken the train was in 1956 to do his military service.
After taking the metro through Paris (quite a stressful experience!) we eventually
reached Amiens railway station in blazing sun - that strange bluish-grey light that
dazzles you after rainfall and makes everything look heavenly. We looked up at The
Perret Tower which dominates the whole town, practically the whole of the Somme,
before settling ourselves down in the auditorium at the Gaumont cinema, ready to
devour the miles and miles of film on everything relating to archaeology.
The festival organizer, Tahor Benredjeb - stately demeanour, black hair, tall and
erect as an Inca Big Chief – presented the films and those who made them. Sixty-five
films one after the other during the 4-day marathon. It was day three and the point
at issue was “archaeo-business”. Yes, it’s still going on. Large scale trafficking
in ancient artefacts, looting, nonetheless enhancing private collections and museums.
A racket dismantled by an intrepid police inquiry and press investigation, related
by Adolfo Conti in his film: “Trafic au musée”.
The next day we presented our film, explaining that, yes, in this day and age it
is still possible to protect and share treasures from the past. Gilbert, in his
cave and on his farm, takes the audience in Amiens from their relatively flat country
to the karstic mysteries of the Périgord Noir: its caves, its rock shelters. The
crowd in the auditorium flies off on a voyage.
The audio-visual students from the Lycée La Hotoie, who were covering the event
accompanied by their teachers Lionel Philippe and Luis Serra, proposed an interview.
16 year old Renaud asked us how we could make a true documentary film without a
certain amount of staging and an audio-visual presentation. I told him you just
have to be there, camera at the ready; a reflex that comes naturally to me after
20 years’ experience working for television as a “journaliste grand reporter”. Admittedly,
we had offered ourselves a rare privilege: we took our time and filmed over a period
of five years.
After an afternoon dedicated to preventive archaeology and a large number of films
showing just how hard the INRAP is battling on every front to save all the vestiges
of our past before our motorways and housing estates swallow them up, the evening
was devoted to prehistoric Europe with the showing of Axel Cevenot’s film: “Les
premiers Européens”. A highly original panorama and a feast for the eyes, based
on the major archaeological discoveries made all over Europe, shedding light on
the different stages of our evolution since we moved out of Africa.
This film was to receive the Grand Prix du Festival that very night. The Prix de
la Drac, for the best metropolitan France archaeology documentary, went to David
Geoffroy for his film: “Gergovie, archeologie d’une bataille”, the famous battle
in which Vercingetorix and his army defeated the Roman legions in 52 BC. An ambitious
film made with a low budget, great precision and tons of talent. The Prix Jules
Vernes-Amiens Métropole, for the best film recounting the «human adventure”, went
to Olga Prud’Homme Farges for her film: “Christiane Desroches-Noblecourt, une passion
égyptienne”. A moving portrayal of the famous Egyptologist who passed away last
year. The Prix GRT gaz “Archéologie et partenariat industriel” was awarded to “Port
englouti de Constantinople” by Hannes Schuler. A port buried beneath the sand in
the Bosphorus on the shores of present-day Istanbul. Finally, the Prix du Conseil
Général de la Somme, allocated by a jury composed of pupils from the archaeology
club at the Collège d’Airaines, was awarded to “Cosquer sauvée des eaux” by Juliette
Cambot, René Heuzey and Vincent May. A film partly shot underwater (since the entrance
to Cosquer Cave is below sea level) as they captured the cave in 3D to make a facsimile
in Marseilles.
As for Gilbert, the audience begged him to go on stage and everyone was deeply moved
by what he had to say, including the president of the jury, Bruno Béart, conservateur
général du Patrimoine, who was kind enough to pay tribute to him. Françoise Payen,
one of the voluntary workers recruited for the festival, offered him a local speciality,
home-made: macaroons presented in a hand-painted glass with Lascaux-style horses
on it. An adorable gesture that really touched us.
TO INFINITY AND BEYOND
We weren’t going to leave the Somme without getting to know the Land of the Pioneers
a little bit better. Marcel-Jérome Rigollot, Casimir Picard, Victor Commond and
also Jacques Boucher de Crèvecoeur de Perthes had tuned our ears to the whispers
from below, from Antiquity, resolutely antediluvian.
Having heard from our colleagues
from France 3 television that the views from the top of the Perret Tower were absolutely
stunning, we found our way to Amiens Métropole on the Monday afternoon, thanks to
Sophie Vachon. We were allowed up to the twenty-sixth floor accompanied by Xavier
Bailly, president of the Heritage committee. We were in our elements, even more
so as they told us the story of Saint-Acheul.
It was while extracting clay to build houses, the famous “amiénoises”, that they
discovered after 1854 the 20,000 pre-Neanderthal bifaces in the Saint-Acheul area
east of Amiens, and it became quite clear that in the Acheulean period, 450,000
years ago, the first Europeans lived here! The archaeological garden was right there,
before their eyes, between the Somme and the Roman Way, before they turned it into
a boulevard. Here, on the outskirts of a verdant city with buses and bicycles, encircling
an imposing Gothic cathedral, actually twice the size of Notre Dame de Paris but
seemingly smaller as we tower above its giddy gargoyles.
We set off from Amiens with a host of pictures in our minds: pictures we had seen in the cinema or seen for ourselves outside. A whole host of images to feed our “thought-world”. We journeyed home to the Périgord Noir, to La Fuste and La Ferrassie, exhausted and happy.
We needed a little bit of time to recuperate quietly. But the festival adventure has only just begun.
Sophie Cattoire
Translated into English by Valérie Saraben
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