Trafic et Navigators

Trafic took on a new format in 2023, appearing yearly, as Almanach de cinéma, with a largely new team.
For the first issue of Almanach in 2023, the Centre Pompidou invited its editorial board and presented the film Navigators by Noah Teichner, the author of a text on the collection and research surrounding the film, published in the Almanach.

Noah Teichner, Navigators, France, 2022, 85 min, 35 mm, original version with French subtitles
Essay / Documentary in 16 and 35 mm
Production Perspective Films 
A Cinéma du réel Sélection 2022
Installation / performance presented for Hors Pistes 2017

Decembre 1919. The United States government deported 249 anarchists and revolutionaries on "the Soviet Ark". A few years later, the same liner became the set for The Navigator, a burlesque comedy by Buster Keaton.
"During the period known as the First Red Scare, 249 anarchists, including Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman, were deported to Russia via Finland five years earlier on board the Butford liner ("The Soviet Ark"), which was used by Buster Keaton for his film The Navigator in 1924. Based on such a coincidence, Noah Teichner made Navigators (2022), a curious, eccentric and marvellous film. Visually reminiscent of the pages of a book and shot in 16 mm with an optical printer and a caption stand, the film adopts the split-screen principle, which allows it to establish a parallel, to compare images and to interpret Keaton's film as an allegory."
Érik Bullot, Notes sur les fantômes (Notes on Ghosts), Trafic – Almanach de cinéma 2023 (P.O.L)