Le Hameau (2014)

In 2011, 2012 and 2013, Bertille Bak met a sibling group of 5 hunter-skidders living independently in the heart of the Alsatian forest, in the hamlet of Ursprung, whose daily life she then shared. Guardians of hunting quotas, animal species regulation, trackers and woodworking, the artist observed the organization of the hunting troops, the traditions and codes that survive and are perpetuated. In her film Le Hameau, Bertille Bak plunges us into the world of this family, a timeless immersion in the Ursprung, which literally means "the jump of the watch" in Alsatian. Close to the research of the ethnologist and concerned by social conditions, Bertille Bak collects and archives the traces and testimonies of the people she meets. With melancholy derision and without taking sides, the film focuses on a singular reality. The result is a delicate questioning of the boundary between the domestic and the wild, the personification of animals and the precariousness of marginal lifestyles.