To attain knowledge, man and woman had to be willing to give up their innocence," says Boris Lehman. Life Lesson is a poetic and philosophic reflection on the theme of paradise lost. Some fifty persons illustrate the planet's convulsions and the world's vacillations. Trying to communicate, to commune with the invisible, they cry out, sing out, give out messages, each in their own way, in their own state of solitude. These are like multiple echoes that resemble waves in the water or stars in the sky. " Behind these images and sounds that have been stifled by today's society, Lehman hunts for noises, cries, songs, messages that go astray. He says that if we look at the invisible we may hear the words. He invites us to look beyond the appearances of social life and to vibrate in tune with life's polyphony that is all around us."

Life Lesson

This film is a confrontation between the texts Antonin Artaud wrote about the Tarahumaras and the films Raymonde Carasco made with the Tarahumaras (from 1977 to 1994) on the track of Antonin Artaud, in Norogachic,  the only place explicitly mentioned by Antonin Artaud.

Artaud and the Tarahumaras

This film was shot during Easter 1985. It shows the preparation and staging of the Passion in the village of Norogachic, Mexico. The initiation rites of two Pascoleros, filmed for the first time, form the center of this document.

Los Pascoleros - Tarahumaras 85

Rites of winter, rites of peyote. A creative documentary based on texts by Antonin Artaud read by Jean Rouch, and the words of the last shaman’s peyote, translated by Raymonde Carasco.