Life is elsewhere: a documentary film by Nicolas Sanchez
“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life...” H.D. ThoreauIn January 2010, in Thoreau’s way, I went by myself, carrying a camera and a tripod over my shoulders, through deserts and steppes in a pursuit journey to find life. I had always wanted to make a movie. When I decided to start I realised that I had already made it. Two people who I had met under certain (determinant) circumstances in my life, had built through me a discourse about life in the form of a full-length documentary. Although I was once again late to my own idea about making a film, it still needed to be filmed. This is how in January 2010 I parted by myself, camera and tripod over my shoulder, to film lives at ground level within determining geographies. I carried with me the minimum equipment possible, seeking to create an atmosphere of intimacy and sensibility that allowed the landscape, and those who inhabit it in silence, speak. There began a project as long and difficult as it is stimulant, a project that today, three years later, has finally reached its conclusion.