Les Immémoriaux (1984)

Overview

The film is a free adaptation of a travelogue by Victor Segalen. In 1905, the writer described in “Les immémoriaux” the passage from the Maori world to another evangelized world. Marc Giannesine in an article published in Le Monde in 1987 wrote: “But beware, the adventure according to Segalen is a total change of life, of skin. For him, it is not a question of superficially aping the customs of the Maori, but of stripping his own culture in mind to better feel that of others. It is exoticism in the purest sense of the term, as Baudelaire understood it, an art of correspondences between the most diverse things. Henri Hiro, emblematic figure in the Pacific, of the defense of his culture, goes back in time for us by following the text of Segalen.