I flew to Peru to join Michel Bonnemaison and Joëlle de la Casiniere. There was a big earthquake. We drove the Montfaucon Research Center Land Rover to Cuzco and began filming in an improvisatory manner. There is a rich tradition of train movies. I consciously quote the 1895 Lumière Brothers' shot of a train arriving at La Ciotat. The film has a Hamlet-like gringo pursued by a dark angel and other references to Hollywood Westerns, including music by the Northern Valley Boys of Maine. The Peruvian minstrels fashion themselves the Grupo Soncco.

Joëlle had already filmed her Purple Rose of Lima. I took my camera to Popayan, Colombia, and waited there for Michel and Joëlle to drive north to join me, where we filmed the landscapes for Tableaux des Indes Galantes. My camera was stolen in Cali, and I flew home. Later, I joined Michel and Joëlle in Montreal to edit Le Petit Touriste and Tableaux des Indes Galantes. Michel said to me, "My boy, two things are clear about these films. The one, we never see a penny from these films, and the two, my position in the history of the cinema is secure." Le Petit Touriste was selected for the 1977 Ann Arbor Film Festival.

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