Erik Bullot's Glossolalie: A Cinematic Essay on Language Mysteries

Erik Bullot's film "Glossolalie" is a cinematic essay exploring the mediumistic states of language, presented at L'Entrepôt in October 2008. The film unfolds between two poles: the confusion of tongues (Babel) and the universal language (Esperanto). It delves into unknown or unheard languages—cryptic real languages, imaginary idioms, secret, mimographic, or 'natural' languages. The work comprises twelve tableaux that interweave these themes, reflecting on the nature of cinematic language itself. Sequences include homages to André Biély and others, alternating speech and writing through testimonials, multilingual dialogues, magnified book plates, glossolalic performances, calligraphy, sign language, periodic black screens, and a proliferation of objects forming a proto-alphabet. Bullot describes his films as enigmas and ciphers, writing with his fingertips and filming with closed eyes. The film references Daniel Heller-Roazen's recent work on how each language lives with echoes of other languages that are not languages.