Cie La Bande Passante (FR)

In September 2015, Benoît Faivre and Tommy Laszlo find a photo album at a flea market in Brussels: lovingly designed, it records the life of a young woman from her birth in 1933 to her wedding. But when they take a closer look, they also discover dark pages: Photos of swastika flags, the father as an officer in the Luftwaffe who mysteriously disappeared in 1945, the family’s emigration to Belgium after the end of the war. Deeply touched, they buy the album and notice parallels with their own family history: Benoît’s maternal family comes from Berlin, Tommy’s paternal ancestors from Budapest. They begin to investigate the story and embark on a quest that takes them across Germany. How can such an album end up on a flea market and who is the young woman? Is she possibly still alive? What remains of our individual and collective past?

Cie La Bande Passante is concerned with the exploration of objects as witnesses to human history. They refer to objects as sponges, as real carriers of history. In 2014, Benoît Faivre and Tommy Laszlo began working on the project “Vies de Papier” (Paper Worlds), in which they trace the significance of books and paper in this context.