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Scratch Projection / May 28, 2024

THE SELF-PORTRAIT AND OTHER RUINS: THE CINEMA OF LOUISE BOURQUE

Louise Bourque is a key figure of the North American experimental film scene. Born in New Brunswick in 1963, she lived and taught filmmaking in the United States before returning to Canada in the 2010s. In 2021, a retrospective of her films was presented at the Cinémathèque Québécoise, accompanied by an installation.

Louise Bourque's œuvre is an irreducible totality in which personal and family secrets hide behind layers of photochemical emulsion. A repetition of motifs springing from home movies and other found footage permeates her films, creating an obsessive universe that is visceral and oneiric at the same time. Through this process, figures from the filmmaker’s personal life transform into leitmotifs, gradually losing their individuality and becoming archetypes. Her “going back home,” returning to the self, corresponds to destruction and renewal. Death and birth, fertility and decomposition. These oppositions run through Bourque’s work and find an echo in her practice; she creates out of images that are “dead” (unused, discarded, forgotten) and buried (in the garden of the familial house). Her engagement with the film material is direct and physical, letting unpredictable chemical processes act on the surface of the film strip, so that new colors and forms can emerge from the deeper layers of the image. The strip becomes the “skin of the film” that barely covers unnameable traumas, to borrow the concept introduced by the theorist Laura U. Marks. From a technical standpoint, Bourque’s work reflects a true hybridity of practices, insofar as she uses a variety of analog and digital tools to translate images from one medium to another, accentuating their materiality. The images, thus transformed, are accompanied by hypnotic soundtracks that induce dreamlike perceptual states and are often composed by the filmmaker herself.

“But it is pointless to paint Bourque’s works with words. Try yourself, try to bring these distant images to mind; now try to retain them. They remain at the limits of interpretation, a lightning flash of joyous signification.” — César Ustarroz, “Remains” in Imprints: The films of Louise Bourque (2021), eds. Clint Enns & Stephen Broomer.

The title of the screening is borrowed from André Habib's article of the same name (inspired by a title of Jacques Derrida) published in Imprints: The films of Louise Bourque, 2021, eds. Clint Enns & Stephen Broomer.

Unfortunately, the filmmaker's presence and the parallel events have been cancelled.

L’AUTOPORTRAIT ET AUTRES RUINES : UNE RENCONTRE AVEC LOUISE BOURQUE

Tuesday May 21, 2024, 20:30



SELF PORTRAIT POST MORTEM
by Louise BOURQUE
2002 / 35mm / color / sound / 2' 30
FISSURES
by Louise BOURQUE
1999 / 16mm / color / sound / 2' 30
JUST WORDS
by Louise BOURQUE
1991 / 16mm / color / sound / 10' 00
JOURS EN FLEURS
by Louise BOURQUE
2003 / 35mm / color / sound / 4' 59
IMPRINT
by Louise BOURQUE
1997 / 16mm / color / sound / 14' 00
REMAINS
by Louise BOURQUE
2011 / 16mm / color / sound / 4' 50
GOING BACK HOME
by Louise BOURQUE
2000 / 35mm / color / sound / 1' 00
L'ÉCLAT DU MAL / THE BLEEDING HEART OF IT
by Louise BOURQUE
2005 / 35mm / color / sound / 8' 00
A LITTLE PRAYER (H-E-L-P)
by Louise BOURQUE
2011 / 35mm / color / sound / 8' 00
HELP
by Louise BOURQUE
2009 / 35mm / b&w / silent / 1' 00
BYE BYE NOW
by Louise BOURQUE
2022 / 35mm / color-b&w / sound / 8' 27

MORE INFORMATION

address
20 rue du Temple
75004 Paris
France
metro Hôtel de Ville (lines 1 & 11) / Châtelet (lines 1, 4, 7, 11 & 14) / Les Halles (RER A, B & D)
tel +33 (0)1 46 59 01 53
email lightcone@lightcone.org
related link Facebook event
rates full rate: 11.00 €
reduced rate: 8.50 €
under 26 years old: 7.00 €
card Luminor 5 screenings: 29.00 €
card Luminor 10 screenings: 52.00 €
cards accepted: CIP, UGC Illimité, CinéPass, CICAE, CNC, Europa Cinéma, SACEM, Presse, carte permanente Luminor