Traberg (1992)

• 66%
• 1992
• Jørgen Leth

Traberg, like Udenrigskorrespondenten, is an experiment in fiction consisting of placing a character or a fictional sketch into a set of surroundings and seeing what happens. Moreover, for most of the film the surroundings are the same, namely the chaotic reality of Haiti. Ebbe Traberg plays Traberg, a mystical character who cannot be explained psychologically and whose seemingly covert activities care only hinted at in pictures. We follow him from a could of locations in Northern Spain (which the genuine Traberg was attached to, including the pelotafrontóns of the Pays Basques) to Haiti, where the film changes character. A narrator comes clean right from the start: "I didn't know where it would lead me. It was this thing about my old friend Traberg. I wanted to tell a simple story. But it was harder than I thought". The difficulty with the fictional story is that the genuine events (a military coup and the inauguration of Jean-Bertrand Aristide as president in 1991) are so intrusive that the narrator pretty much loses interest in Traberg and works in a hectic documentary style instead, although in the closing shots a resolution of the Traberg story is hinted at. The film also contains several detached scenes from Haiti, including sensual, dark dance shots, a series of adages pronounced by an elderly gentleman, conveyed by fading up and down, a girl bringing cocktails for the film crew at the Hotel Oloffsen, etc. This material points clearly forward in time to Haiti. Uden title, in which Leth gives up the fictional framework entirely and devotes himself to his fascination for Haiti.