Transcript

Se connecter aux déconnectés | Benoît CHAUMONT | TEDxÉcoleCentraleLyon

[Applause] When the organizers of this edition called to invite me, they told me the theme was connections, so I hung up. I thought, "Yeah, I've stayed in hotels with no Wi-Fi, I've been to areas where my phone gets poor or no signal, but I won't have much to say, I won't give a whole speech in front of you." And then I learned it was about interpersonal, human connections in general, and so I thought, "Well, actually, yes, that's exactly it. My job as a journalist is to connect the audience, the general public, through the media, with the people we meet, with our sources, and with the information." There was a journalist who was about to speak, someone I really liked, named Rémy Kolpa Kopoul, who described himself as a collector. Hello, my name is Benoît Chaumont, I 'm a journalist, I'm 40 years old, I've been doing this job for 18 years, and in recent years I've done a series of reports that It's called the Dictatorship Tour, so as the name suggests, the idea was to tour the most closed-off, most disconnected countries in the world—about a dozen, in fact. Obviously, in terms of dictatorship, the best or the worst is always North Korea. The problem when you want to do a report in North Korea is that you have to go there, and for that, there are a few journalists in recent years who have managed to go by showing their credentials. They are carefully handpicked by the regime to cover ceremonies or military parades, but that wouldn't have worked for me because I'd already been doing dictatorship tours for a while, and so when you typed my name into Google, you immediately came across the same thing: " dictatorship tour." I think he wouldn't have liked it; he wouldn't have invited me. There's another way to go, so it's as a tourist, because it's possible. And a few travel agencies, especially Chinese ones, offer tours to North Korea, so I thought... I was going to do this, I was going to go as a tourist, but when you register on the travel agency's website, the first question they ask is whether you're a journalist or a photojournalist. So, I had to lie and tell them I was a private chef. I even created a fake private chef website—well, it wasn't me, they helped me do it. I don't know how to do that, but with my photo, disguised as chefs, and we paid to have the site optimized so it would come up first. When you typed my name into Google, you'd find Benoît Chaumont, private chef. So, that way, I was more credible to register, and if they had any doubts, a lawyer or someone on site would be available. I showed them the private chef website, but it worked so well that I even got requests for quotes on the site. And then, Mauges... and then, go ahead and love the story, which in my opinion shows the most the impossibility of... Connecting with the North Koreans, I couldn't film her because we filmed a lot of our vacation, our filming, but we couldn't film everything. We were accompanied by guides, or rather, supervised by guides, throughout our vacation. One evening, these two guides—like 99% of North Koreans, they've never left the country—but they had the privilege of learning English. When you think about it, they're among the few North Koreans who are in contact with the outside world, since they see foreign tourists all day. One evening, we were having a drink with them, and one of them, curiously, asked us questions about Obama. She wanted to know more, and the other one next to her glared at her and told her to stop asking questions. I understood that it was forbidden for her to ask questions about what was happening outside, and that's when I truly understood the power of the dictatorship. There's another series of reports I made for Canal+ called " [ __ ] the System," so it's still about people who are disconnected from society. "[ __ ] the System" involved immersions in communities living on the margins of society, outside the modern world. The report that affected me the most was with the Mennonites. The Mennonites are like the Amish, but in a much more hardcore version. It's like Little House on the Prairie mixed with Deliverance, for those who've seen the film, you'll understand. The Mennonites live in isolation, and for religious reasons, they reject progress and modernity. They live amongst themselves. The Mennonites speak a language that no longer exists called Balman, but even their Low German is even less prevalent. When I got back, I wanted to have the conversations I'd met translated. So, to find out what they were saying, I called the Goethe Institute and found a Bahamian translator. The investigation was n't overwhelmed, and who's who? I sent him my children's recordings. He listened, and actually, they didn't understand you. They've stayed so much among themselves in Bolivia. So, I'm submitting this to you: these are Mennonites, Bolivian inhabitants, and they've stayed so much among themselves that their language has become stagnant. And this translator, my nephew, didn't understand anything about the Mennonites. So, we didn't ride in a horse-drawn carriage. And because we'll call it modernity, and there's a twist, it's the tractor. They have tractors to work in the fields, but their tractors don't have, let's say, lively tires. Tractors have wheels with steel blades to prevent the tractors from leaving the settlement so the young people don't escape. Also, the tractor can only go on small roads and not on the paths outside. So, that's what it is. You understand, Balme, plus the tractors... so it's practically impossible to get out. What? It's a small dictatorship. So for me it was absolutely amazing, like you, I can't even describe it, a journey back in time a century ago. But it works the other way around too, meaning that for them we're aliens, believe me, and you can especially see that in the eyes of the children, children who are discovering for the first time a camera, seeing people dressed differently, speaking a language they don't know. And the Mennonite children aren't smiling because toys are forbidden among the Mennonites; fun is actually a sin, so you can't have fun there, except at Jacob's. Jacques, he's a Mennonite I met somewhat by chance outside the settlement. It's a settlement, so it covers several dozen hectares. There are enclosures, there's an exit outside the settlement, there's a refreshment stand run by Bolivians, and a small supermarket. And there I was, having a drink with my colleagues, and we ran into Jacques. Like a Mennonite who buys a bottle of whiskey on the sly when there's obviously alcohol in his hand, but it makes you want to, I tell myself I absolutely have to meet him so we can find out a little more, and Jacob the next day almost invited us to his house, and we went the next day, we arrived at 11 am, Jacob had just gotten up with a terrible hangover, and at Jacob's house there were toys, in fact Jacob was the rebel of the village, and his kids were super cool, you know, he had a little scooter and not everything was Jacob, he even had a camera hidden under his bed, but the memory albums at Jacob's house are not like ours, what he showed me is so very quickly I come across his collection of photos of carriage accidents, road accidents, May disfigured or even of little Mennonites who are born deformed because since they live in isolation there is no mixing and they very often marry their cousins, message and type man it's Not great, and you could already tell that they wanted to leave the community, but in fact, they couldn't; they were stuck because they were born there. Speaking of which, you had to speak a little Spanish, but not enough to leave. This is also true in Bolivia, which even has reintegration programs for Mennonites who are either expelled or decide to flee their community. I also went to communities where people had seemingly chosen to withdraw from the world, but I noticed a common thread each time: the need to escape their minds, to think at one point or another. And Jacob, as you saw, for him it was alcohol. He gave himself up, which allowed him to... 200 were a bit... but I also went to a community on the Mount Athos peninsula where nearly a thousand Orthodox monks are secluded, and for them, their way of escaping is prayer. They are really too... Chopin... In fact, they take it five times a day, and that's when they can escape this very austere daily life. I also went to see the Rastafarians in Jamaica, but the real Rastafarians, that is to say, those who live outside the system in the east, in the mountains above Kingston. Well, you know, they refuse, but the Rastafarians have a good excuse: it's to connect with Jo, their god, the Almighty. Finally, I also went to a commune in the former Allied Empire, a community called Slab City in the United States. It's in the Californian desert, and there, they're the lost souls of America. It's like Mad Max in the middle of the desert, and for them, it's all of that combined: alcohol, joints, prayer, since there's a mass every Sunday. But they're also comfortable with methamphetamine. There is, however, one more positive point I noticed: Most of these communities are incredibly connected to nature; they're super eco-friendly because they live in self-sufficiency. They only eat food grown near their homes, which is great because there are zero greenhouse gas emissions. They also don't use pesticides, so everything is organic, and most are vegetarian. For example, the monks of Mount Athos in Mali—one monk explained to me why he was vegetarian—said that eating meat was too vigorous and caused sperm accumulation, so they prefer to avoid it. So, for this GP2 series, I've been to about twenty countries, and in my career, I've probably been to around fifty destinations. But I'll let you in on a secret: I don't like to travel. I don't like to travel because I feel I have empathy for the people I meet. I don't like to travel to places, to countries where things are bad, where people are suffering. And empathy, well, when you Thinking about it, it's about connection, and that's what allows you to have a genuine connection with people, the most genuine connection possible with the people you meet. I think above all that empathy should be the primary quality for a journalist. Thank you. [Applause]