Anuktatop: the metamorphosis

From a marginal childhood oriented music in countryside, Pierre Selvini undertakes, after school, longs studies. First passionate about physics and mathematics, he joined the preparatory classes for the grandes écoles followed by an electronic license. Then he turned to musicology, aimed physics research of musical acoustics. He finally enters the ESAV (Audio-Visual Superior School, Toulouse, France) that allow him to see Cinema as a door to develop and transcend his various passions for science and art.

On his arrival in Paris, he first worked as a sound engineer and composer, but in parallel develops a project and a friendship with Nicolas Pradal. Their willingness to get involved humanely with natives in French Guiana will push them to create an associative, participatory project that will last more than 7 years. A first conclusion with the film "Youth of the river" give them the will to go further in film research, both in substance and in form, and so the film Anuktatop: the metamorphosis culmination of a long artistic work and a human success on indigenous territory. During these years, he continues to work in parallel on set or in post-production as an engineer sound, director or assistant director on smaller projects (short films, institutionals, advertisings).

He is also interested in social and scientific alternative crops in the city as well as Japanese culture, particularly with the meeting in 2014 of a group of psycho-acoustics and ethno-musicological researchers based in Tokyo, Japan.

Nicolas Pradal was born in Meaux (France) in 1984. Being a bad young pupil, he ends up doing a carpentry degree. In the meanwhile his uncle, a philosophy teacher, gives him the passion for cinema. After studies in Sociology and Anthropology, he enters the ESAV (Toulouse’s audio-visual superior school).

His graduation movie “Les rêves et la loi” (dreams and laws) frontly shows the complex situation of Aboriginal people in Australia. This trip is the key to many subjects he has been studying since then.

In 2009 he begins a documentary in French Guyana in Native American territory. This touchy topic brings him to the point where he decides to make participative movies. He directs the 52 minutes “La Jeunesse du Fleuve” (The river’s youth) in partnership with Les Films du Sud as a producer, then co-directs

Anuktatop la métamorphose (Anuktatop the metamorphosis) with Pierre Selvini, produced by the association Chercheurs d’Autres.

He is currently writing two projects taking place in French Guyana. Puu Baaka will be a pure documentary on a out-of-mourning ceremony performed by a Bushinenge tribe (descendants of ex-slaves who fought and won their freedom).

Omole will be a documentary/fiction co-written with the anthropologist Renzo Duin and two French Guyanese Native Americans. It will show the archaelogical quest conducted by a young Wayana man far from his actual territory.

He is also writing a fiction taking place in the South of France and Andalusia (Spain), a musical drama with flamenco music from an ancient gipsy legend.