THE MOVIE


SYNOPSIS

"Humanising" war is a gruelling task. But then, Arabian tribesmen with ageing rifles pitted against Migs make for a gruelling clash. What did a humanitarian envoy carrying a Swiss passport, the one famous for its white cross on a red background, hope to accomplish ... ? Yet sending dozens of delegates and a mix of Swiss, German and French doctors into the civil war that raged in feudal Yemen in the 1960s turned out to be the most dramatic and effective action mounted by the International Committee of the Red Cross at a time when it was still the only player on the scene, and when NGOs were as yet unknown. The story is told by those who risked their lives conducting the operation, starting with the mission leader, André Rochat. It takes us from the desert to the behind-the-scenes bastion of humanitarian power and to the fountainhead of the struggle for human dignity, amid a decor of citadels as old as the Bible − citadels that even today remain partly intact.


PRELIMINARY NOTES PRIOR TO FILMING by Catherine Azad

"Wearing a black suit and a hat on his close-shaved head, he cut a long, slender figure ... ". That is how Rochat appeared to Catherine Azad when she and her companion, Frédéric Gonseth (who would direct-the film)-met him-in August200!5 at-the publisher’s (Editions de l'Aire). The former ICRC delegate had come to talk with them about his book, L'homme à la croix (The Man with the Cross). Its five hundred pages related eight years of humanitarian missions to the Middle East. They talked about it for three-quarters of an hour. The two interviewers had read the book, and Rochat's account of Yemen had transported Azad back to 1988. Memories long forgotten had welled up inside her. The country that she and Gonseth had crossed with their six-year-old daughter, with its violence perpetrated against women, its tribal laws and the scourge of khat, had not made a favourable impression on her.
Thus, she had found it difficult to share her companion's enthusiasm for Rochat's book. The author had moreover struck her as "stiff, self-centred, engrossed in military details and hard to get into." She had accompanied Gonseth a bit grudgingly to their first interview with this Lawrence of Arabia from Vaud Canton. Although he certainly captivated both of them and the idea of a documentary quickly gelled, Azad still could not bring herself to establish a genuine dialogue with him. But with each interview, the initial strain wore off and their rapport deepened. "André the Conqueror" lowered his guard, emotion worked its way into their discussions and Azad "at last started to grasp the awesome political, historical and human dimensions of the 1960s mission to Yemen".
In these short "Preliminary Notes prior to Filming", Catherine Azad reveals the adventure that the documentary became for her. She relates her discovery of the amazing André Rochat, her own return to Yemen from Sanaa to Aden and her buried Pakistani roots that, who knows?, she may one day reconnect with.

Pierres d’islam, by Catherine Azad, in the collection Rencontre, Editions de l’Aire, Vevey, 2008 Full text (about 16 pages) available for the media at info@fgprod.ch