Himalaya: Terre de Serenite by Arnaud Desjardins (1968), consists of two remarkable early films shot in the 1960's for French television, focusing on the Tibetan yogis at the sacred lake of Padmasambhava in India, Rewelsar. The first film, Le Lac des Yogis, features rare footage of the early years of Tibetan refugees in India, with a young Dalai Lama and his sister Jetsun Pema, plus Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche, Trijang Rinpoche, and Dudjom Rinpoche performing an initiation at Rewelsar, or Tso Pema. The second film, Les Enfants de la Sagesse, features a young Dalai Lama and his Gelugpa monks, and the 16th Gyalwa Karmapa training the main young tulkus of the Kagyu lineage - now renowned teachers in their own right.

A shot of a few buildings in the middle of nowhere, and then the camera delves deep into exotic, luxuriant vegetation. We are in Tropical Islands, a leisure complex near Krausnick, a village 70 kilometres south of Berlin on the site of a former Soviet airbase. At this very spot, moving from one affectation to the next, the upheavals of the last century pile up like so much sediment. Europe's scars and contradictions, its mindscape, its dreams and illusions.

2 Mostra de Vídeo Independent de Barcelona 1994.

“Nothing of importance has ever been communicated by being gentle with a public, not even one like that of the age of Pericles; and in the frozen mirror of the screen the spectators are not looking at anything that might suggest the respectable citizens of a democracy. But most importantly: this particular public, which has been so totally deprived of freedom and which has tolerated every sort of abuse, deserves less than any other to be treated gently.”

In military terminology, inner lines are escape routes which are located near opposing lines. They provide a way of passing undetected and fleeing. Around Mount Ararat, in Turkey and Armenia, messengers and their carrier pigeons travel along these parallel paths to meet up with communities in the grip of war. During their wanderings, they encounter Yezidis who have fled from the atrocities committed by Daesh and found refuge in transit camps in Turkey. They stand beside the last living survivors of the Armenian genocide. They travel around war-torn Nagorno-Karabakh, to accompany and support the bereaved families there. Throughout the story, men and women bear witness to what they have endured, to their shattered lives, to life, fighting off death. Above all, their words tell a tale of violence inflicted by men on other men, a violence that seems everlasting and obstinate.