In a nutshell, Eduardo Williams’ films are dances. His images are created out of a “physical intuition” of the environment in which his camera and characters move, or in his own words, of “the constant movement that creates a melody between surprise, variation and connection of different spaces and bodies”. From Pude ver un puma [Could See a Puma, 2011] to Parsi (2018), Williams has developed a distinctive style that builds on this intuition. In his films there’s always a freshness that challenges expectations of narrative, context and place. The materiality of the images alone constitutes different worlds in themselves, always sensual and pleasurable to watch, regardless of whether filmed on 16mm or a pocket camera. Williams often talks about rhythm, fluidity, flow and non-verbal communication when describing his approach, as if for him filmmaking is essentially a dance.

His first film, Could See a Puma, opens with a shot tracking a group of teenagers making their way through a series of adjacent roofs—with no real paths, they decide how and where to move with their own body, making their way as they cross from one building to another. There is a sense of liberation and ease in this kind of movement, as it transgresses pre-established borders and paths in space: they are reduced to a point of view, or a challenge.

In I Forgot! this features even more prominently. We follow the lives of young people in Hanoi through claustrophobic construction spaces, gardens walled in by concrete building and police harassment. In the end, however, a young man we’ve been watching rides his bike along with some friends to the outskirt of the city to hang out at some empty buildings. Here, they traverse walls, windows and roofs, repurposing the empty space to their own lively game. Palpitating with the energy of freedom and possibilities, even the camera becomes liberated from its wielder, unexpectedly freeing itself from the limits of where it can be and breaking down the line between filmmaker and subject.

This move is emblematic of Williams’ collaborative approach towards filmmaking, especially when it comes to working with people whose language he doesn’t speak. Instead of a rigorous script, Williams would have “trajectories” of certain phrases, routes, or actions that he’d give to the characters, if they can be called that, which they are then free to change and adapt. The performances that we see in Williams’ films are essentially improvisations, which endow the scenes with an inner dynamic that is fascinating despite being cryptic. When two characters sit on the stairs and talk about forgetting in I Forgot!, we get a sense that the narrative can disintegrate at any moment because it feels so improvised. At the same time, the tension from this threat of disintegration keeps us attentive and reward us with moments of surprise: a strange-looking bridge, a series of empty similar-looking buildings, death-defying jumps, etc.… Williams’ “trajectories” present each situation as a becoming: not in the sense of an event in a procession that reaches an end, but as a synchronic “and,” decentralized, entangled in the environment. Everyone involved in it has control over the situation that will end up on film, resulting in a kind of raw energy that justifies its own unfolding.

It’s easy to fall into the trap of naïve misrepresentation or exotification when a filmmaker tries to make films in a foreign country, especially like Vietnam, considered to be in the periphery. However, Williams’ filmmaking approach not only removes him from this risk, but also complicates the politics of centre-periphery, which speak to his interest in continuity, in rhythms and flows. By focusing on bodies and their energies, Williams is engaging in a destabilization of the powers that generate a discourse of disparagement.

What is most striking about Hanoi, and cities in Vietnam in general, is its traffic. Traffic is the city’s flow of energy. The film takes to the street a couple of times, and twice right into the traffic. The motorbikes we see, the main means of transportation in Hanoi, are not so much vehicles as extensions of the drivers’ bodies. The traffic is composed of agents moving independently in harmony without even paying attention to each other, as if each driver has tapped into some kind of communal energy, some kind of flow. It is an ongoing dance, in other words, which can be intimidating if one is thrown into it without any instructions. However, Williams’, with his sensibility and physical intuition, is able of finding in the unfamiliar not intimidation, but a possibility for fresh combinations, musicality and beauty.

Credits

A film by Eduardo Williams

Produced by Amaury Ovise
Associated Producer: Jean-Christophe Reymond, Gerald Herman

With the collaboration of Nahuel Perez Biscayart

Image: Eduardo Williams

Sound: Arnaud Soulier, Arthur Beja, Hoang Tung

Video editing: Florence Bresson

Audio editing: Claire Cahu

Direction: Dương Thị Hoa
Mix: Simon Apostolou

Calibration: Yov Moor

Direction assistance: Trịnh Thị Huyền

Editing assistance: Arthur Muller

Translation: Anh-Thuan Doan

Special thanks:
Nicole Pham, Lolo Zazar, Nguyễn Thanh Huyền, Lê Thành Sơn, ĐẶng Ngọc Chính, Nguyễn Lâm Hưng, Cao Văn Tuấn, TDP Movie Center, Bui Thac Chuyen, Hoang Thu Thuy, Marthe Lamy, Said Hamich, Bernard Payen, Thibault Carterot, My Lan Nguyen Quang, Matthieu Deniau, Sionann O'Neill, Elisabetta Pomiato, Léa Colin, Jean-Pierre Rehm, Fabienne Morris, Paolo Moretti, Etienne Bigorre, Didier Simon, Gerald Herman, Estelle Brevet-Philibert, Camille L'Héritier, Yann Pichot, Lucie Sauvagnat

With the support of Département de la Seine-Saint-Denis
In partnership with Centre national du cinéma et de l’image animée

© Kazak Productions