Rob Rombout

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▶ Excerpt · 1′04″

200152 minDocumentary

Canton la Chinoise

Canton, the Chinese City

Canton is said to be the most Chinese of cities: eight million people, a city running wild, where the past disappears under concrete and tarmac. Rob Rombout and the video artist Robert Cahen follow five people caught between two cultures, two systems, two ideas of art. A window, a photograph, a painting or a foreign language always stands between them and the city. The film asks what it means to be in China and, at the same time, not to be there.

Press

“The camera is not a voyeur (that is always the risk), but caressing, cautious, attentive.”

« La caméra n’est pas voyeuse (c’est toujours le risque), mais caressante, prudente, attentive. »

Marc Mercier, Bref, 2002 · Our translation.

“What the outsider’s gaze, the lens, captures is not only the surface of a city, but the restless soul enclosed by these tall buildings.”

“异域者的目光/镜头所捕捉的就不仅仅是一座城市的外表，而是被这些高大建筑物笼罩着的躁动的灵魂。”

Chen Tong, Xin Kuai Bao, Guangzhou, 2001 · Our translation.
  1. 2001带摄影机的人Chen Tong, Xin Kuai Bao · PDF ↗
  2. 2001Inspirante CantonSylvie Mousseau, L’Acadie Nouvelle · PDF ↗
  3. 2002Les chemins de traverseMarc Mercier, Bref no. 53, summer 2002 · PDF ↗
  4. 2022An aesthetic of confusionMarc-Emmanuel Mélon, The Mise en Scène of the Real, Yellow Now, provisional translation · PDF ↗

Photographs

A white-haired man filming with a video camera in a street, his reflection in a mirrored pillar beside him
2000Guangzhou
A white-haired man with a video camera and a round sound screen, filming a young woman seated on a wooden bench
2000Guangzhou, Robert Cahen and Carine
A white-haired man looks through the viewfinder of a small video camera fitted with a round disc
2000Guangzhou, Robert Cahen
Three men sitting on a chair and on the floor of a bright room, orange boxes and papers around them
2000Guangzhou, Robert Cahen, Christian Merer and Zhang Hai’er
A white-haired man with a camera, a man in a dark suit and two young women looking at something in a hall
2000Guangzhou
A man in a dark suit in front of the Guangdong Museum of Art, two women walking down the steps, a white-haired man filming at the right
2000Guangzhou, Guangdong Museum of Art
A man with glasses and a young man in a green uniform sitting at a small table by a train window
2000China, on the train
A young woman in a flowered dress, a man in a grey shirt and a white-haired man holding a camera, standing in a lobby
2000Guangzhou, Robert Cahen, Tong and Carine
A white-haired man holding a video camera and a man in sunglasses and a dark T-shirt, bamboo behind them
2000Guangzhou, Robert Cahen and Rob Rombout

Technical sheet

Title
Canton la Chinoise
Year
2001
Runtime
52 min
Countries
France, Belgium
Languages
Cantonese, Mandarin, French
Production
CICV Pierre Schaeffer and others, with RTBF and ARTE
Availability
On request
Direction
Rob Rombout, Robert Cahen
Editing
Maureen Mazurek
Sound
Gilles Marchesi

Prizes

  1. 2001Best documentary, Festival international du cinéma francophone en Acadie, Moncton