LE FOND DE LA SEINE
Presented at Musee D’Orsay, 2023
Film by Ivan Argote
Sound design and music by Daniela Huerta
Le fond de la Seine is an archaeological exploration of the Seine, the renowned river that flows through Paris. It reveals a poetic portrait of a river full of life, its stories, dark depths and secrets. The film is about one’s relationship with the water, how it evolves from its original crystal clear source that slowly becomes a powerful mass of water, urban passage, deposit of objects and dead corpses, and power that ends up pouring and merging into the ocean.
What would La Seine say to us if she could talk to us? Does it remember everything we've dreamed, imagined and said about it? Its luminous passages, its dark corners? All its secrets? Words of love? Sorrows?
Le Fond de la Seine speaks to us in the first person, revealing a poetic portrait of a river charged with life, luminosity, stories and dark spaces. This portrait, created using underwater and landscape images, narrated by a powerful voice and accompanied by a moving soundtrack, builds as the film progresses. From its timid source, the origin of many Paleolithic myths, through gentle, crystalline corners that slowly become a mighty mass of water, industrial road, urban passage and power that finally empties into the ocean, merging heart and soul with all the bodies of water on earth.