Amber boom, outdoor projections, filming of a short film … – Liberation
Tell « A story as in the cinema, that of the night which has become a space for resistance, of creative and human freedom, in reverse of a world of the prison day ». This is the ambition of The effervescent actress and director Valérie Donzelli (War is declared, Love and forests,, Nona and her daughters) invited this year to take the reins from the 24th Edition of Nuit Blanche. Saturday, June 7, with more than 100 artistic projects scattered across the city, accessible free of charge between 7 p.m. and 6 a.m. « Huge cinema set ».
The Parisian event, launched in 2002, will therefore have the 7th art as a common thread: the opportunity to celebrate its 130th anniversary, in the city where the Lumière brothers gave in 1885 the first paid public session. To celebrate this anniversary, Gaumont and the Fémis will invest the Petit Palais, transformed for the occasion into a festive space, with meetings, projections, concerts and DJ sets.
Filmmaker Michel Gondry (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind or more recently The Book of Solutions) is the special guest of this edition. True to its tinkered and poetic universe, it will offer a sound installation in Stalingrad and will unveil before the Montparnasse station a new short film, What a sleepless night!an « animated film in cut papers ». He will finally transform the city of Villejuif into a cinema set, by recycling his « amateur films factory » (activated for a first time in 2014 in Aubervilliers) by inviting residents to collectively create a short film in three hours.
Other interventions will take place in unusual places: singer Philippe Katerine Metamorphose the youth district, place du Louvre, for a crazy pink and musical performance, like its universe. The writer and journalist Xavier Donzelli – the filmmaker’s little brother – will invest the catacombs for a poetic sound journey. A ambulating phosphorescent boom, imagined by the multimedia artist and scenographer Juliette Gelli, will set in motion towards the Saint-Martin canal.
Always on the cinema side, six essential directors will be honored for a night and their works projected in a loop and outdoors. Jeanne Dielman Chantal AkermanPlace des fêtes (19th arrondissement), Be beautiful and shut up Delphine Seyrig On the sports field of the Saint-Paul gardens (4th arrondissement), One sings, the other not of Agnès Varda on the forecourt of the XIV town hall, or the works ofAlice Guy, first director of historyJacqueline Audry and Germaine Dulac on places or building facades…
If the films leave the cinemas, the videographers who came from the field of contemporary art, are invited to get out of their usual experimentation field to invest the cinema of the 7 parnassians (XIV). Among them, Anne-Charlotte Finel tracks a resilient nature which is reinventing itself in the subsoil of the metro, Valérie Mréjen questions the mother-daughter dynamics and resistance to authority, and Alice Brygo recalls in images of synthesis the anxiety of the crowd in front of the fire of Notre-Dame. Clément Cogitore (already used to commuting between art and cinema …), it diverts generic promotional images and offers an immersive experience.
If it remains faithful to the popular and festive tone, with this almost without gap bias which is fully focused on the cinema, this 24th edition of the Nuit Blanche continues to move away from its first ambitions: a prospective and demanding festival dedicated to contemporary art, to its young artists and commissioners.
