Makala

Makala

Emmanuel Gras, France, 2016, Les Films du Losange

Comment

Makala is a documentary which follows the journey of a young man who mines coal (Makala) in the Congo, without commentary or intervention. The shoulder mounted camera reveals a strange carriage on the road, it rises from the dry and dusty road to reveal the silhouette of a man leaning against a load much heavier and higher than he is - an improbable scaffolding of sacks on a makeshift bicycle, which he struggles to control. The camera follows the man very closely, the sound of his short, jerky breathing interrupting the sound. Faced with such an obstacle, a road that climbs, the man seems to hesitate: the tight shots that follow one another document and capture, in reality, the doubt, then the superhuman effort that arches the body to the point of exhaustion, the harassing gesture drawn from his last strength to overcome the difficulty. The proximity of the camera, the precise work on sound and light make us feel up close with sensations linked to the landscape he crosses: the sun going down, the rising dust. A shot from behind in the middle of the extract reveals the silhouette of the man, isolated in the savannah, whose task suddenly seems both titanic and derisory, giving him the tragic face of Sisyphus. The director's radical choices, with a very present camera, very precise cutting and editing, and a total absence of commentary, reveal the tragic dimension of the daily life of this man, whose livelihood is akin to a way of the cross. He can also provoke empathy and discomfort in the viewer, questioning this bias.