Wooden Dice Without Numbers

A young man reaches into a hollowed tree trunk and pulls out a large wooden die in the film Ce gamin, là (1975). His back is to us. He rolls it around a stone marked by a depression that lays horizontally on the roots of the tree. The camera follows his movements from the tree to the stone. He is not alone. An older youth walks nearby. As the die finishes its roll, he repeatedly touches his head to the die as if in prayer, his body bent over. This movement then becomes fingers gesturing downwards, in a sort of ecstatic frenzy, before resuming the rolling. The camera closes in on him. Meanwhile, the older man comes into the frame and stands next to him, eventually taking up the rolling of the die himself, but without the markedly neurodivergent gestures. The die has no markings, no numbers on it. Neither words nor looks are exchanged between the two within this space they share.

Throughout the actions filmed in Renaud Victor’s Ce gamin, là, a voice, belonging to writer and educator Fernand Deligny, narrates:

It’s not about one or the other. It’s actually about a kind of “we.” But a “we” that has nothing to do with the conjugation of the persons that are here present. Sure, we needed to understand each other, to devise, even without believing too much. But it was always despite us that the kid would make the evidence spark: that there he would find us. And these “theres” of his were quite peculiar. That’s how this stone was born, this stone that allows initiatives, exploding. Just like when you hit a stone, and it happens to make sparks. A stone and a die.

And yet, the wood against the stone sink intensifies a hollowed sound, the spark reverberating over his words.