3 . Sous la terre de Polin , Ania Szczepanska © Bachibouzouk-Les poissons volants
shows us rails that end in a bush , rails that are no longer in use , yet continue to be inscribed in the landscape , like a piece of abandoned wasteland . We enter your story through this nature , dotted with traces of forgotten infrastructure and scattered individual houses .
Sheol was the reason for your first trip to Poland . That was a trip to a rarely visited and little filmed region , less filmed than the forests around Auschwitz . Could you describe these places and what you saw in these spaces and these landscapes when you travelled there ? In Polish , the word for “ landscape ” ( krajobraz ) consists of two words : “ country ” ( kraj ) and “ picture ” ( obraz ). If I start with landscapes , it is also because it is a motif already present in your previous films . In L ’ enfance d ’ Aharon ( 2018 ), for example , Appelfeld speaks of the Carpathian region as a place of origin , an imaginary space of childhood , then a place of the extermination of the Jews . You had also known this country or these countries of Poland with the help of literary stories , films and archive images , but this is the first time that you went there to film archaeologists at work , on the grounds of the former Sobibor extermination centre . “ What did you see ” during these trips and why did you choose to show us these landscapes ? Is it because it is a cinematic figure imposed in any film that deals with the Shoah ( after Lanzmann ' s
Shoah )? Or is it because these landscapes produced something in you , in interaction with your knowledge about “ what happened there ”?
Arnaud Sauli : The film had to be given a name that conveys both the sinister magnitude of the event and our obligation to the exact place where it occurred . This idea of a place where the dead stay for an indefinite and variable amount of time disturbed me by how it could connect things that are unexpected today : first of all , Sheol is a very concrete place , with a materiality , just as much as it includes a more abstract questioning about the fate of the dead and their souls . The shifting thought of time attached to it , as well as the indefinite character of the dead residing there ( who were good , bad or both ) may indicate to us that it is in fact about a crossing , a passage that is always under way . So the place contains all the emotions : mourning , hope , despair , anger and fear , questioning us . What should we do with this place , with the memory written there , with those buried there ? This is the obligation to which archaeologists , workers , architects and museum staff respond . The film also attempts to do this , with a particular psalm in mind that gave the film its title :
For in death there is no remembrance of thee . In the grave ( Sheol ), who shall give thee thanks ?
Psalms 6.5 Ketuvim ( Hagiographa )
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Observing Memories Issue 7