Cynopolis

In the film Cynopolis Camille Henrot films Saqqara, site of the first pyramids and now inhabited by a pack of wandering wild dogs. The camera follows the animals and wanders with them. The images alternate in a parallel between archaeological digs, the gestures of labourers and waste sorted by women on the outskirts of Cairo. Henrot presents the dogs of Cynopolis as archetypal entities, guardians of abandoned sacred places, but also as wretched in their filth. What emerges is an overlapping of environment and point of view, of the sacred grandeur of the past and the decay of the present.