Rich with Other Peoples’ Cultures?

Documentary film by Roland Pellarin

Production: Stratis, 2001
Ethnova collection in collaboration with the Ateliers d’ethnomusicologie
DVD or PAL VHS cassette, 52'

Once upon a time, there was a town in the West where the cars were newer and bigger than elsewhere, where the doors to the bank were more hermetic and the roads less dirty.  This model town was proud of its international organisations, its industrial desert, its financial scandals and its immigrant workers.  It was a hotel-town where all the nationalities of the world intermingled without knowing one another.  It was a town where life was good, where inhabitants enjoyed riches and good health.

It is in this dream town that every year for the last seven years an intensive week of world music and dance workshops take place, called the Croisée des Cultures, organised by the Ateliers d’ethnomusicologie.  Why are Westerners so passionate about Oriental dance or African percussion?  What does this cross-cultural mix mean and what remains of it after a week of forced exoticism? This documentary addresses this infatuation that is not just a trend.