Africultures Dossier: <em>La Permanence / On Call</em>, by Alice Diop

Abstract

La Permanence / On Call, by Alice Diop Olivier Barlet Translated by Beti Ellerson In competition at the Cinéma du Réel Film Festival in Paris (March 2016) where it received the Institut Francais Louis Marcorelles Award, La Permanence / On Call is a film that makes a difference and is necessary as an increasingly fearful Europe faces the influx of refugees and migrants. In a small doctor's office, a fixed camera is placed on one side or the other of the room, allowing either the practitioner or the patient to be seen. How is it that the viewer remains glued to the screen for more than an hour and a half with such a minimalist approach? Transfixed, moved, and in total empathy with those men and women, their pain, their suffering. This is no doubt what Alice Diop felt from the impact of hearing about these dramatic experiences that speak of the terrible evolution of a world where violence has become commonplace. Initially her feelings, which she aptly conveys to us without pathos but with the meticulousness of her craft, become our own. She is discreetly present, as is her sound engineer, whose hands, at one point, are in view at the edge of the screen in an attempt to put a smile on the face of a baby. Diop and her sound engineer are not trying to conceal themselves. A patient looks at them and asks, "Are you still here? Do you go to other hospitals or just this one?" He also admires the work of the boom operator: "All day, it's heavy!" As in a film by Chantal Akerman, time is an asset. A static shot of a wall, a door, a chair and the top of a desk, compels us, in terms of duration, to focus on the details: the dilapidated walls, the oldness of the equipment. We are at the public hospital. This doctor, who has a sense of irony, notes that because of the lack of funds, there is a shortage of prescription pads. This doctor is one of these modern heroes, anonymous and invisible, who give themselves to their task, with the means available. Assisted by a psychiatrist and a social worker, he maintains the Permanent Access to Healthcare (Permanence d'accès aux soins de sante, PASS), a basic service at Avicenne Hospital in Bobigny. This doctor is the only one in Seine Saint-Denis that offers consultations without appointments for newly arrived migrants, often [End Page 269] without social security and pending administrative decision on their status in France. When a refugee gets asylum, he or she is happy, though it is rare to hear, "This is a new life, everything will go well now!" This immediately tempered by, "Well, almost." We spend an hour and a half with the doctor and the stream of patients, some of whom become familiar to us. Concentrated, the doctor listens to their hopes, often concerning a certificate necessary for the next step, or drugs that may distance them a bit from their suffering and their anguish. Entering through this little door, waiting patiently in the austere waiting room, are the effects of the harshness of the world, seen far beyond the door. Marked on their faces and visible in their gazes and silences is the precariousness of their situation in France, often without income or housing, lacking sleep as they are forced to slumber in parks, and the traces of the violence that they have fled. Can we not accommodate all the misery in the world? Perhaps not, but how are we doing our part, we who have historically provoked the largest global division of wealth and power? In his broken English or Spanish, the doctor communicates somehow with those who have not yet learned French. Neither superiority nor condescension in his relationships. And especially not a belief of what is or should be the other. In his presence, his comments, his questions, while continuing respectfully without a judgment of otherness, he positions himself as an alter ego, as a fellow human being. When a lady living at Emmaus1 shows her fingers deformed by osteoarthritis, the doctor responds: "I have the same...