DEVIL’S ROPE, documentary by Sophie Bruneau (USA)

88min – HD Sony EX – Color – Dolby stereo & 5.1
Director: Sophie Bruneau
Production: alter ego films / Les Films du Nord
Sound Recording: Félix Blume
Sound Editing: Valène Leroy
Mixing: Cyrille Lauwerier
DOP: Rémon Fromont, Fiona Braillon
Editing: Philippe Boucq
Director Assistant: Celia Dessardo
Broadcast: Arte

Radio Program about the sound work here

It’s the story of an universal and familiar object-tool: the barb wire. It began with the first pioneers, the spirit of the conquest and the wild-hunt. It takes place in the time and space of the West. It is the story of an incredible and diabolical invention, made with a coffee grinder and a grindstone. A small agricultural tool that became political issue and grew with capitalism. The landscape is wearing its history. This is the story of development of surveillance and control. The inversion of the reference. Like a leapfrog game between Human, animal and fence… Would you believe that this piece of barbwire, banal, could tell that much about our way of thinking, living and being in the world?

FESTIVAL: Dok Leipzig (De),
“As in her previous film, “Trees”, Sophie Bruneau needs only one object to describe a whole world. In this case it’s barbed wire that tells a parallel history of the settlement of America. What started out as a useful tool to fence in animals leads to the staking of claims and the large-scale privatisation of land and ultimately to the sealing of the Mexican border against economic refugees. The former myth of the Wild West and the still popular phrase “God’s own Country” are taken ad absurdum in the face of the forest of private property signs and the gating frenzy. After all, individualisation and industrialisation come at a price. The land has long ceased to be a landscape and turned into mere arable territory. These facts are not devoid of a certain humour, which Sophie Bruneau brings out calmly in “Devil’s Rope”. With gusto and a few surprising twists she depicts the origin and rich variety of this simple wire in grand tableaux. The references implied in the images to the original American movie genre, the Western, add to our enjoyment.” Cornelia Klauß, DOK Leipzig