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▶ Excerpt · 1′24″

200040 minDocumentary

Le Piège de Kerguelen

The Kerguelen Trap

In 1772 the navigator Yves de Kerguelen came upon an archipelago in the far south of the Indian Ocean. “These isles are a fearsome trap,” he wrote in his log; all he left there were the few cats he had on board. Two centuries later the scientists of the Popchat mission land on Kerguelen to trap the cats, which have gone wild, and to see how they have adapted to the freezing climate. But who is observing whom?

Press

  1. 2022A decoyMarc-Emmanuel Mélon, The Mise en Scène of the Real, Yellow Now, provisional translation · PDF ↗

Photographs

Two crew members with a camera on a tripod on a wide plain of brown stones, a vehicle far off
1998–99Kerguelen
A cameraman at a tripod and a sound recordist with a boom microphone on a quay, a ship at anchor across the blue water
1998–99Kerguelen, the Marion Dufresne
Four people in bright jackets lying side by side on the bare ground, chins on their hands
1998–99Kerguelen
Three men in the open cabin of a small white helicopter, a camera between them
1998–99Kerguelen
Four people standing close together in front of low prefabricated buildings
1998–99Kerguelen
A man in sunglasses and a red and black jacket on the shore, a ship at anchor and snowy mountains behind
1998–99Kerguelen, the Marion Dufresne
A man in a dark jacket among a group of king penguins on green ground
1998–99Kerguelen, Rob Rombout
A man raising his arm beside a large elephant seal rearing up in the foreground
1998–99Kerguelen
Thousands of king penguins on a wide shore, surf breaking on the beach behind
1998–99Kerguelen

Technical sheet

Title
Le Piège de Kerguelen
Year
2000
Runtime
40 min
Countries
Belgium, France
Languages
French, English
Production
Asap, with Dada Studios
Availability
DVD Heure Exquise! · on request
Versions
Shot during the southern voyage of 1998–99 (Mélon 2022, p. 157) and completed in 2000; registered in 1998 at the Clermont-Ferrand film market. 40′ in the credits published in Mélon 2022; 37′ on the Heure Exquise! DVD.
Direction
Rob Rombout
Assistant director
Rogier van Eck
Image
Samuel Dravet
Sound
Griet van Reeth
Editing
Adriana Moreira de Oliveira
Music
Hughes Maréchal
Voices
Pascal Perez, Rob Rombout, Christian Janssens

Prizes

  1. 2000Special award, Man and Sea festival, Vladivostok