Ile de France - extract from Bayjoo on Vimeo.
Ile de France (2015) is a non-narrative film focusing on Mauritius' landscape, architecture and the details of objects tracing its colonial history and multicultural social fabric. Using a painterly approach to the moving image, Shiraz Bayjoo (b. Mauritius 1980) invites us on a lyrical journey through the island, using tracking shots of details of the rugged coastal landscape and jungle encountered by seventeenth century Dutch colonisers, of the French graffiti on early settlements, of the objects of prayer in a traditional Muslim merchant timber house, of footage of independence celebrations from Britain in 1968 playing on a domestic TV set, and of the missing key of an ancient piano in a former sugar baron's mansion. Whilst the film is absent of protagonists, Bayjoo skilfully conveys the island's complex social history. The film catches a soft light outlining the place of structures and objects in contemporary Mauritian life. Ile de France offers a tapestry of histories that unfold like the roots of the banyan tree that permeates the island. A polyphony of sounds, narratives, languages and songs weave through the visual footage.
