AustLit

S like Savoir (Knowledge)

L like Light

O like Opening

R like Rêve (Dream)

From movie to movie, and edition to edition, the Festival of Oceanian Cinema recognised the obvious need to highlight literature and to open its arms even wider to now welcome a Book Salon in Rochefort.

From as early as the 18th century, the fate of Rochefort and the Pacific have been linked by scientific expeditions. Now, a different kind of travel happens, through the visual arts and books.

Thanks to the work of a few dedicated, methodical, and organised connoisseurs, the SLOR is now a regular rendezvous, an experience for all amateurs who are curious and in love with this immense Oceanian story, of those who write it, and those who read it!

The first of its kind in France, this event shines a light on and gives access to all the written and oral literatures, a key to how we perceive ourselves and others, and how others perceive us.

It’s a Pluriphone (multilingual) approach of a rich, diverse, and growing body of works.

A transmission of knowledge and imagination, this Salon is also a free way of accessing all of the contributors to a book’s journey: authors, editors, translators, booksellers, librarians, all inventing the past and future memory of an Oceania that remains at the antipodes.

Pushing back against earth and sea frontiers, this Salon is an opening to encounters, in schools, the Rochefort prison, coffee-shops and streets, libraries, and museums. It will circulate words, ideas, questions, and experiences about politics and poetry, economy and environment: Oceanian issues that raise as many challenges as they do questions.

With guests from the Pacific or elsewhere, roundtables, conferences, readings, signings, workshops, and performances, the rhythm of this festival of the book is a vision of the Oceanian world.

Here comes the time of the Rochefort “dreaming”!

Caroline Bourgine