Louidgi Beltrame’s work is based on documenting modes of human organisation throughout the history of the 20th century. He travels to sites defined by a paradigmatic relation to modernity: Hiroshima, Rio de Janeiro, Brasilia, Chandigarh, Tchernobyl or the mining colony of Gunkanjima, over the sea off Nagasaki. His films - based on the recording of reality and the constitution of an archive - appeal to fiction as a possible way to consider History.

Gunkanjima
2010
Vidéo, 33 min en boucle.
The deserted island of Gunkanjima (Battleship Island) condense Japan’s race towards modernity and its organised and willing entry into the industrial era during the Meiji Restoration. This islet, 480m long and 160m wide, surrounded by walls and covered in reinforced concrete blocks, used to be just a desolate reef off the coast of Nagasaki, until Mitsubishi decided to exploit its layers of coal in 1890.