Le Ciel d’Andrea

Le ciel d'Andrea recounts the extraordinary circumstances that led Andrea, a young German woman from Bavaria, to become a Korean shaman. It is a personal and cultural revolution—a matter of life and death.

Andrea tells her story in the first person. Her initiation in Korea was filmed in 2007. Her story resonates with the places she visited—filmed either in her presence or empty.

Andrea is the spiritual daughter of Kim Keum Hwa—a renowned shaman and a "Living National Treasure" in her own country. What is the nature of the bond uniting a "daughter" and a "mother" through a spiritual conversion that transcends all territorial and cultural boundaries?

Andrea’s initiation by Kim Keum Hwa represents a contemporary trace of a cultural tradition spanning more than 3,000 years; shamanism has withstood its marginalization by Confucianism and Buddhism, as well as the Christian evangelicalism of the late 19th century, when Korea opened up to the world.

Andrea is a central figure between two worlds facing each other: Western Europe, heir to a rationalist thought of the Enlightenment, which constantly tries to consolidate the concept of civilization and the Orient, a distant figure masked by the temptations of orientalism, a reading of the Other, inaccessible, sometimes frightening, but seductively exotic. Andrea's path is unique, it brings together our classical pantheon, his own Catholic heritage as well as a complex and rich cosmology from China and Korea. How can all these guests be summoned to the same table and share the same sky?

Le ciel d'Andrea visualizes—through imagery, text, and music—an unsettling familiarity, a boundary point for our Western, ethnocentric perspectives. Korean shamans say that dancing is a form of healing; so let us dance upon the fault lines of our certainties.

A Natacha Nisic documentary

Co-produced and broadcast by Arte La Lucarne

Director : Natacha Nisic

DOP : Natacha Nisic et Nathalie Durand

Length : 90 min

Editor : Natacha Nisic et Matthieu Augustin

Sound engineer : Jean-Yves Pouyat