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Tuesday, February 27.
I awoke very early.
The light is still undecided, very soft and sad,
as it often is in the tropics.
I'm suddenly projected 15 years into the past,
to early mornings in the Seychelles,
on beaches like this.
I was 20, shooting my first film.
The tropics enchanted me, the entire world one big promise of happiness.
Suddenly, the fishermen in front of me are replaced by others.
Once again memory fills the foreground.
Once again, I'm incapable of living in the present,
of feeling it, of touching it.
Even in the Seychelles, reality escaped me,
that elusive harmony between men, light and landscape.
I had to reinvent it, modify it,
project onto it my dreams and memories.
I had to destroy it.
Westerner, filmmaker,
time's tamer, time's slave.
The sun is now high in the sky.
The catch is poor, as it often is on the Madras coast.
We film the faces, the order and beauty of things.
Suddenly, the scene changes.
A stranger joins the fisherman.
He stands out in his city clothes.
He's come to buy their fish,
to take it on his bicycle to sell in the neighboring city.
He's not a big buyer,
but for these fishermen, as in the rest of the world, he's the enemy,
a middleman who won't pay full price.
So begins an argument over pennies.
It's the same story over and over, the old story of exploitation.