Cinema: a spring under the sign of adventure

This spring, La cinémathèque du documentaire à la Bpi opens its screens to adventure. From the 1920s to the present day, on all continents and even in space, from the depths of an as yet unexplored jungle to the most obscure areas of the Internet, documentary cinema is on an expedition to bring a little of the magic of real to spectators, young and old.

À l’aventure !

Everything will start in music with the cycle À l’aventure ! Le documentaire prend le large, which will be punctuated by four film concerts performed by guitar, theremin and marimba virtuosos. Built around the great figures of adventure cinema, from Robert Flaherty to Werner Herzog, the cycle will offer itself a parenthesis in the form of a flight, from the beginnings of aviation to the conquest of space, to unravel on this crucial question: “Does adventure still exist in the 21st century? Even if, as Henri Michaux lamented in 1928, this earth is rinsed of its exoticism, and if the limits continue to be pushed back ever further by the “conquest” of space, this set of films highlights that the adventure is inseparable from the approach of the filmmakers, from their ability to experience, to cross the world and to be its lucid witnesses.

Cycle Helga Reidemeister

It is to this, in a completely different register, that the German filmmaker Helga Reidemeister works, whose films question social determinism, the condition of the working class and the condition of women, in Germany and in a changing Berlin before and after the wall fall. Recently deceased, this program is an opportunity to pay him a unique tribute in France. Along with the two screenings of the Trésors du doc ​​meeting, dedicated to German cinema of the 1920s, this short cycle joins the vast program that the Centre Pompidou will devote to New Objectivity between May and September.

Regular meetings and special sessions

This spring, traumatic, individual and collective memories mingle and resurface at the detour of the Fenêtre sur Festivals event, which will open with the Windows on Japan festival and the memory of the 2011 tsunami; also at the bend of the Carte blanche to the P’tit ciné de Bruxelles which crosses family memory, colonialism and Franco’s dictatorship; finally, at the detour of the special ARTE session, which questions the figures of exile and the preview session of Exit of the trains by Radu Jude, a documentary essay devoted to the first great massacre of Jews in Romania, in 1941.

While this season’s films often explore a past that sheds light on and influences the present, documentary cinema also dialogues with postmodernity. In particular during a session of La fabrique des films devoted to the Girls of Tomorrow, 2015-2045 project by Nora Philippe and a carte blanche at La Revue Documentaires where artists venture without a camera on digital platforms, but also on the occasion of the opening of the symposium on subjectivity in the post-cinema era.

The adventure is also combined with the present, in the immediacy of the encounter, which is brilliantly shown by the film Balcony Movie by Paweł Łoziński, Grand Prix at the Fipadoc 2022. And every Friday, Les yeux doc à midi will explore the meanderings of relationships lovers, while Les rencontres d’Images documentaires will venture into the twists and turns of schizophrenia (with Solo by Artemio Benki) and politics (Marseille contre Marseille by Jean-Louis Comolli).

Finally, the ciné-conférences of Université permanente de Paris return and go in search of the secret of artistic creation; just like the EHESS seminar Le cinema en acte which, on the occasion of its 3rd season, sees Claire Simon join Stéphane Breton to continue this exceptional research work on cinematographic creation through the works of an exciting panel of filmmakers. : Hassen Ferhani, Sophie Bredier, Agnès Varda, Cecilia Mangini, Frederick Wiseman, Shohei Imamura, Heddy Honigmann and Rithy Panh.

Enfin, les ciné-conférences de l’Université permanente de Paris reviennent et partent en quête du secret de la création artistique ; tout comme le séminaire EHESS Le cinéma en acte qui, à l’occasion de sa 3^e saison, voit Claire Simon se joindre à Stéphane Breton pour poursuivre cet exceptionnel travail de recherche sur la création cinématographique à travers les œuvres d’un passionnant panel de cinéastes : Hassen Ferhani, Sophie Bredier, Agnès Varda, Cecilia Mangini, Frederick Wiseman, Shohei Imamura, Heddy Honigmann et Rithy Panh.

Ready for the adventure?

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Download the full Cinémathèque program for spring 2022: