Film directed by: Shawn Corell and Charles H. de Brantes (34′, 2020).
In Pondicherry – India’s Franco-Tamil town, today so cosmopolitan – a garden has been created around a statue of Joan of Arc. A project organised by the Friends of Pondicherry Heritage and the Fondation Vieilles Maisons Françaises; a story of people coming together, combining local and European expertise ; and a film to tell the story of its creation, to reveal its inspiration, the different stages… and the spirit that blows through the new garden’s foliage.
“To begin with, the garden was an empty space open to the sea, with a statue of Joan of Arc in the middle and a few solitary trees… The project was to provide Pondicherry with a new space for relaxation and meditation, between the church of Our-Lady-of-Angels and the Bay of Bengal. As in the tradition of Indian and Persian gardens, the structural lines of the garden meet at the central point, the statue, which is surrounded by a very low pool. A layout that also respected the design of the original garden. So our mission was to restore and create, to reveal the identity of the place – or to try and make visible the invisible.”
(Mariachiara Pozzana, landscape designer)
In the footsteps of the dialogue opened by Jules Monchanin, Henri Le Saux, Bede Briffiths and Pierre Ceyrac
vimeo.com/shawnbaumer/agardenreborn
Heritage & People of Chandernagore 