Alain Mazars
Rouges silences
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Add rightsFormat DVD Interzone
Original format 16mm
Year 1978-1984
Language(s) French
Artist(s) Alain Mazars
Author(s) Frédérique Devaux
Subtitles English
Booklet 48 pages (French, English)
Running time 120 min
Films
ROUGES SILENCES (1978) 53'
LE JARDIN DES AGES (1982) 31'
VISAGES PERDUS (1983) 13'
ACTUS (1984) 23'
Description
"Here is a stunning film. First by the rhythm of the images, visual scansions, extremely rigorous framing, lighting, direction of actors—in short, a concentration of cinematic elements that exists above all for efficacy. But not the narrative efficacy with which American cinema inundates us, rather a genuine professional efficacy that gives each shot a dynamic, a force, a fully realized intention. Here, the codes of the fantastic are both amplified and distanced by an expressionist aesthetic that perhaps for the first time in expressionism takes humor into account. Certain extreme close-ups of flowers and insects recall the prose of a Caillois, for which I had known no cinematic equivalent until now. There exists in this film a dual movement. At once, a kind of restraint in the shots and a bulimia, a frenzy to film—perhaps it is this above all that troubles us and carries us into a way of seeing that was unknown to us. Here is a film that takes into account an entire plastic and narrative heritage and puts it through the grinder of a terribly personal style."
— Jean-Jacques Bernard on Rouges Silences