– From March 9 to 12, 2011 at Villa Arson – NICE
Free entry
In the presence of the artist and other guests (actors, screenwriters, and film critics)
Alongside experimental cinema, artist cinema, spanning art video, literature, cinematic essay, and creative documentary, has always been a research territory for cinematic expression. With curiosity, L’ECLAT chooses to view these unique works in cinema for their forms, narrative systems, as well as their modes of production and distribution.
Videographer, photographer, writer, and visual artist, Valérie Mréjen utilizes multiple means of expression to better explore the possibilities of language. At the intersection of artist video and cinema, her works are often inspired by memories, daily events, cruel and burlesque details of existence, clichés, misunderstandings… She often mixes various types of stories, whether reported or experienced, which she rewrites and rearranges before staging them with actors or people from her surroundings. Starting from a memory, an object, or a common expression, the artist explores the potentials of orality, staging, with a certain humor, the reverse angle of banality.
////////// PROGRAM //////////
– Wednesday, March 9
3 PM :: Screening of an art video program and the short film French Courvoisier
Meeting with the cinema students of Lycée du Parc Impérial de Nice
7 PM :: On the side of literature
Reading and signing at Masséna Bookstore
– Thursday, March 10
Afternoon :: On the side of literature
Meeting and reading with the students of the LittOral Research and Creation Workshop, directed by Patrice Blouin, Arnaud Labelle-Rojoux, Joseph Mouton
7 PM :: The video work
Meeting with the artist hosted by Patrice Blouin (critic at Cahiers du cinéma and Art Press, teacher at Villa Arson)
Screening of several art video series made between 1997 and 2008:
Bouvet // Au revoir, merci, bonne journée // Sympa // Jocelyne // Il a fait beau // Elisabeth // Blue bar // Portraits filmés // Oops // and the latest productions for her 2008 exhibition at the Jeu de Paume.
– Friday, March 11
7 PM :: Crossing to cinema
Performance reading by the artist with Jocelyne Desverchère (actress)
Followed by the screening of a program of short films selected in many festivals:
La défaite du roue-gorge // Chamonix // French Courvoisier
– Saturday, March 12
7 PM :: Documentary questions
Meeting with the artist hosted by Stéphane Bouquet (screenwriter and film critic)
Screening of documentary films:
Dieu (2004, 12min)
Pork and milk (35 mm, 2004, 52 min, French-subtitled version)
There is a constant discussion about the “return to religion,” explaining how individuals, seemingly unpredisposed, become suddenly fundamentalist. Valérie Mréjen has chosen a decidedly opposite perspective. She went to Israel to meet those who, raised in the strictest orthodoxy, one day decided to break away from religious fanaticism, those who are said in Hebrew to have chosen “to go towards the question.” These people must shed habits often acquired since childhood to learn how to lead a secular life.
Valvert (Video, 2010, 52 min)
Valvert is a psychiatric hospital in Marseille created in the mid-1970s, in a spirit of openness and free movement. The film, through an observation of daily life, paints a portrait of the place by mixing interviews with caregivers and scenes of patients’ lives. In an atmosphere distinctly removed from the asylum model, this circulation highlights different behaviors of ordinary madness. This film was supported by the Nouveaux Commanditaires.
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L’ECLAT An Experience of Cinema
L’ECLAT is the Regional Center for Artistic Education and Cinema Training in PACA. It ensures circulation between distribution, training, and creation in the field of visual and audio arts. Addressed to the widest audience, L’ECLAT fosters the meeting of arts, placing cinema in a debate with different artistic forms.
Based at Villa Arson, L’ECLAT develops a cinematic program particularly highlighting works by young filmmakers or emerging cinematographies, notably linked to the activities of the National School of Art and the National Center for Contemporary Art.
Place of Experiences for Cinema and Letters, Arts and Technologies
