Des avantages de la pêche africaine sur celle de Terre-Neuve

Benoît Laffiché's look on human beings and territories—reflected by the use of the film medium—is above all the look he shares with others, like the employees of a company in charge of deconstructing a cinema in India, the pilgrimage of an Indian friend on the mountain of Shiva, the inhabitants of Casamance in Senegal, for example. His research, encounters and trips from the past few years have brought him to an interest in traditional fishing. Des avantages de la pêche africaine sur celle de Terre-Neuve ("Advantages of the African fishery over the Newfoundland fishery" in English) offers a series of images from a movie shot in Super8 format, on an industrial cod-fishing trawler in Terre-Neuve and, at the heart of it, four double pages dedicated to an expedition by the same trawler off the coast of Guinea-Bissau. The edition shows an archive of the movie which was shot in the '70s by the captain of the trawler himself and found nearly 30 years after it was created. Skylines, close-ups on the meshes of the net and fishermen at work are all moments that are shared here. These are highlighted by the alterations induced by the specificities of the film medium but also by the time that separates the date of the filming of the rushes and that of their rediscovery. The title comes from the title of a chapter in a book written by Sabin Berthelot, a nineteen-century French ethnologist and naturalist who is specialised in the Canary Islands and fishing on the west coast of Africa. Sabin Berthelot highlights the economic and human potential of fishing in West Africa.