:23:07
Of course I'll never make that film.
:23:12
Nonetheless I'm collecting the sets, inventing the twists,
putting in my favorite creatures.
:23:17
I've even given it a title,
indeed the title of those Mussorgsky songs: Sunless.
:23:45
On May 15, 1945, at seven o'clock in the morning,
:23:48
the three hundred and eighty second US infantry regiment
attacked a hill in Okinawa they had renamed 'Dick Hill.'
:23:53
I suppose the Americans themselves believed
that they were conquering Japanese soil,
:23:58
and that they knew nothing about the Ryukyu civilization.
:24:01
Neither did I, apart from the fact that the faces of the market ladies at Itoman
spoke to me more of Gauguin than of Utamaro.
:24:07
For centuries of dreamy vassalage,
time had not moved in the archipelago.
:24:13
Then came the break.
:24:14
Is it a property of islands to make their women
into the guardians of their memory?
:24:19
I learned thatas in the Bijagós
it is through the women that magic knowledge is transmitted.
:24:24
Each community has its priestessthe noro
who presides over all ceremonies with the exception of funerals.
:24:29
The Japanese defended their position inch by inch.
:24:33
At the end of the day, the two half platoons formed from the remnants
of L Company had got only halfway up the hill,
:24:38
a hill like the one where I followed a group of villagers
on their way to the purification ceremony.
:24:45
The noro communicates with the gods of the sea,
of rain, of the earth, of fire.
:24:49
Everyone bows down before the sister deity
:24:53
who is the reflection, in the absolute,
of a privileged relationship between brother and sister.