In Ris-Orangis, Nil Yalter gives a voice to the Portuguese community of Ris-Orangis, the “foreigners” that live in the Parisian suburbs, shut out on the outskirts of the capital.

In Ris-Orangis, the immigrants – in this case Portuguese workers – talk about their situation, their suffering, the nostalgia for the country they had to leave, as well as the difficulties they are experiencing to integrate in France, a country that they do not consider to be a welcoming country of refuge. They describe their feeling of loss of identity and the obstacles that confront them on a daily basis.

Everything in this video contributes to restoring dignity and nobility to people who no longer feel that they are being taken into consideration. Through this work, Nil Yalter made a major effort of remembrance concerning immigration. In order to do so, she collaborated with sociologists, associations, and city councils: “You can’t just go to people’s houses like that and say to them: tell us about your life.”[1]

We can observe that the testimonies recorded in Ris-Orangis are timeless, that they contain a dimension that is universally applicable, both in terms of their aesthetic and in anthropological terms. Nil Yalter attests to this is an interview in 2009: “Nothing has evolved, only populations have changed. The new immigrants are no longer Italian, Portuguese, or Turkish. They are African, or from Central Europe. But the problems are the same. That’s what I want to show.”[2]

It is by adopting this unique perspective – as closely to the people concerned as possible – that Nil Yalter can take stock of the paradoxical nature of the state of the “migrant worker”, between feelings of exile, the desire to integrate, and the sadness of leaving one’s roots behind.

Lou Svahn

[1] Interview conducted by Maya Larguet - August 2009: http://www.histoire-immigration.fr/musee/autour-des-expositions/carte-blanche-elele/portrait-et-interview-nil-yalter-l-avant-gardiste

[2] Ibid.