Title

Before the Wall:Body & Being

The title of the film has two parts, so to speak, theme and setting. They play into each other, dynamically, with the ultimate aspiration that dualities disappear or are pre-emptied.

Body & Being refers to the theme, what the film “is about”. Before The Wall refers to its setting, in a couple of different ways.

In its sense of “before and after” Before The Wall alludes to a previous film, made in Paris in collaboration with Gil de Kermadec some fifteen years ago, called in English The Ball And The Wall. At that time we talked about making another film, which, in the sense that it would deal with a situation prior to going to the wall, preparing to go to the wall, preparing body and breath for the co-ordination with the ball — in that sense such a new film would be before the Wall film.

Of course, the word before also carries the sense of being in front of or facing, and in that way also points quite concretely to a place, a setting, a wall, where play and practise may find shelter. Where play may be seen as a cluster of capabilities or potentialities, playfully approached through an expansion or narrowing of the field: with or without a ball, with or without linear limits, a slow or a quickening rhythm, etc.

Finally, the title as a whole speaks to the setting itself, its taking place before, if possible, the usual dichotomies set in, before we begin to build walls between this and that, between winning and losing, between real play and merely practise, between real pros and only amateurs, between (jock) cult and culture, between body and brain, between bodies and being etc.

Thus the title tries to address this wholeness: play expressing itself in its actuality, spoken from your own roots.