27.09.22
Events
SYLVAIN GEORGE SHOWCASE
JOLI MAI (2017)
Pretty May (Those who have killed less than a hundred times, throw the first stone at me). Video. Black and white. Noir Production. 8 min.
At the end of the demonstration of 1 May 2016, the police use force.
L’IMPOSSIBLE – PAGES ARRACHEES (2009)
THE IMPOSSIBLE – PEACES OF FURY
(Songs from the protests)
Placed under the auspices of Rimbaud, Lautréamont, Dostoievski and Benjamin, of free jazz and punk, this film endeavors to testify to the iniquitous policies which shape our time, to the "infernal" character of certain political lives or black bodies (that migrants/immigrants, workers, unemployed, students, etc.). It operates, as a minority, a critical stasis of mythical and majority realities; and works on the body the question of revolt and insurrection: overflow, disidentification, undecidable reconfiguration... impossible.
The film is divided into five parts:
1. THE WOOD OF THE SHIPS (I burn properly!)
2009, Super 8, Black and White and Color, 15 min., prod: Noir Production.
Calais, desolate city. Whiteness of the snow that covers the city. Black and tutelary shadows, cross and Belfry, which dominate it. Scarlet fires that envelop and burn her. Figures and faces of people who come back from afar. Migrants. Outcasts. Variation on calcined and infernal landscapes and political lives: the black bodies.
2. BALLAD FOR A CHILD (We won't kill you any more than if you were a corpse)
2009, Super 8, Color, 26 min, prod: Noir Production.
Calais, desolate city. Evocation: In a small wood, the "jungle", a young man who comes from afar, from a Middle East at war, is murdered. It was in December 2008. And it is a whole world, political, which gives up the ghost, to whom we will give up the ghost. Invocation: A young man passes by who comes from afar. And his words, traces and survivals, like a song, come from even further afield: from the chasms, from the sea and the deserts, from oblivion, from the infinite edges. A young man passes by who comes from afar, like a new Orpheus, political, black and rebellious. An impossible young man that nothing and no one can now stop...
3. ARMED AGAINST JUSTICE (Burn! Burn! Burn!)
2009, video, black and white and color, 29 min, prod: Noir Production
Paris. Demonstration of March 19, 2009. Civil servants, students, precarious, undocumented immigrants, unemployed, retired, pound the pavement. Until this one burns, between rage and anger; and that voices are delivered by inscribing themselves in time. Until the State represses, violently and arbitrarily; and that innocent bodies be condemned.
4. THE TIME OF THE ASSASSINS (Fire Music)
2009, video, black and white and color, 17 min, prod: Noir Production
Paris. Demonstration of May 1, 2009. Pursuit, repetition of the insurrectionary gesture: "Peace in the cottages, War in the castles". After a few centuries, the Hôtel de Ville in Paris was again occupied, and the Council of Paris reinvested by a revolutionary assembly. Invocation: the Commune of Paris. Evocation: the people who come. Here is the time, come again...
5. YOU WILL REMAIN HYENA ETC. (The book of the damned)
2009, 16mm, Black and White and Color, 17mn, prod: Noir Production.
With the participation of Lionel Soukaz and Tripak. Like an infernal circle.
Variation on treachery and denial, the spitting of the renegade as a medal, "pension funds" as becoming, from the book "Letters to those who passed from the Mao collar to Rotary" by Guy Hocquenghem, and films by Lionel Soukaz and/or with Guy Hocquenghem.
FOUR WAYS FROM SUNDOWN
Sylvain George's showcase is a part of Kino ARMATA’s Four Ways from Sundown programme, curated by Sezgin Boynik, Alush Gashi and Vigan Nimani for Manifesta 14 Prishtina, also featuring Felix Kubin, Jean-François Pauvros & Jean-Marc Montera and Anna Thew. Four Ways from Sundown is supported by Foundation Manifesta 13 Marseille.