Country: France, , South Korea
Year: 2007
Duration: 40'
17-year-old Virgile sends an e-mail to Blanche, who is the same age. They had danced together a short while earlier and the boy has fallen in love with her. But Blanche has absolutely no recollection of the evening. The two continue to write to each other, giving Virgile the opportunity to expound on his ideas about life and death, theories which Blanche follows with great attention. But when Virgile asks her to meet him, Blanche says it isn’t possible. In fact, she is obsessed by the presence of Eustache, a boy who loved her without ever meeting her and who then committed suicide. “Although I believe that digital video has specific artistic possibilities, I do not believe that it is, in its current form, an appropriate medium for cinema fiction. However, I have tried to conceive a work which functions within the limitations of the medium. At the same time, the subject of my film reflects the moral question brought up by the video movement, because it concerns the way in which modern technology, imposed by outside political and economic forces, in some ways enables us to continue old things in a new form, but also, in some ways, completely transforms essential aspects of human life.”
Biography
film director
Eugène Green
(New York, USA, 1947) moved to Paris in 1969, where in 1977 he founded the Théâtre de la Sapience, with which he staged various Baroque and modern plays. He made his directorial debut with Toutes les nuits, Prix Delluc for best debut film in 2001. He then directed Le nom du feu, presented in Locarno in 2002 and distributed together with Le monde vivant, which took part in the Directors' Fortinight. With Correspondances he was awarded in 2007, together with Harun Farocki and Pedro Costa, the special jury prize in Locarno, where he returned to competition in 2009 with A Religiosa Portuguesa and in 2014 with La Sapienza, shot between Switzerland and Italy. In 2011 TFF dedicated a retrospective to him and then went on to program several of his films, such as the documentary filmed in the Basque Country Faire la parole (2015), Le fils de Joseph (2016), which premiered at the Berlinale, and the workshop film En attendant les Barbares (2017). In 2020 he returned to the Basque Country to shoot Atarrabi et Mikelats, which was presented in San Sebastian. In addition to his activity as a director, he also works as a writer and poet.
FILMOGRAFIA
Toutes les nuits (2001), Le nom du feu (cm, 2002), Le monde vivant (2003), Le pont des arts (2004), Les signes (mm, 2006), Digital Sam in Sam Saek 2007: Memories (ep. Corrispondences, mm, 2007), A Religiosa Portuguesa (2009), La sapienza (2014), Faire la parole (doc., 2015), Le fils de Joseph (2016), En attendant les Barbares (2017), Como Fernando Pessoa salvou Portugal (cm, 2017), Lisboa revisitada (cm, 2019). Atarrabi et Mikelats (2020), Le mur des morts (2022).
Cast
& Credits
regia, sceneggiatura/director, screenplay
Eugène Green
fotografia/cinematography
Raphaël O’Byrne
suono/sound
Frédéric de Ravignan
montaggio/film editing
Fabrice Rouaud
scenografia/production design
Alessandro Vuillermin
interpreti e personaggi/cast and characters
Delphine Hecquet (Blanche), François Rivière (Virgile), Christelle Prot (la madre di Blanche/Blanche’s Mother), Clément Cogitore (Eustache)
produttore/producer
Martine de Clermont Tonnerre
produzione/production
Jeonju International Film Festival
