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Introduced by Federico Rossin
Vincent Grenier was born in 1948 in Quebec, Canada. He lived for many years in the United States, mainly in New York, and passed away in Ithaca in 2023, very close to Binghamton University where he had taught for a long time. Grenier made a major contribution to the Montreal art scene of the 1970s and 1980s, as well as to that of the San Francisco Bay Area, where he obtained an MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute in the early 1970s. His videos and experimental films have won numerous awards and have been shown in prestigious museums and festivals in North America, Europe and China.
In the 1970s, as the "structural" movement was deconstructing the entire cinematographic apparatus, imposing an experimental cinema that was at times a bit arid, cerebral and cold, Grenier proposed instead a "gentle deconstruction", a highly personal and rigorous visual research. In his first films made over the course of more than ten years (1975-1987), Grenier articulated questions essential to cinema: what is light? What is shadow? What is a frame? How does focus work? How does the mechanical eye see compared to the human eye? How do we distinguish colors and shapes? How is the three-dimensionality of the moving image created? Film after film, Grenier reinvents the foundations of the Seventh Art, first freeing the viewer from photographic realism, then from the temptations of fiction, embodiment and psychology, and finally from mythopoetic romanticism (following in Brakhage's footsteps, Grenier surpasses him in rigour and radicalism). Grenier's early works keep the viewer in a state of childlike discovery of the world, in a constant and productive tension between a pure sensation of form and a moving rediscovery of sight. A phenomenological, philosophical cinema, it is also playful. Vincent Grenier has been an inspiration to many young filmmakers, and his early films are exemplary of the freshness, purity and monastic simplicity of his work that cannot fail to move us again and again.
In this program, going beyond a simple chronology, we have tried to arrange Vincent Grenier's early films into a unified, fluid sequence of motifs, textures and forms. Seen one after the other, the films begin to intertwine and coalesce, all the while examining the question of sight, only to arrive at an 'almost' documentary image in the final film. An apprenticeship and an emancipation.
– Federico Rossin
Thanks to Mary Zebell, Daïchi Saïto, Emmanuel Lefrant.
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LIGHT SHAFT
Le puits de lumière by Vincent GRENIER 1975 / DCP / b&w / silent / 6' 21 |
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INTÉRIEUR INTERIORS (TO AK)
by Vincent GRENIER 1978 / DCP / b&w / silent / 15' 00 |
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WHILE REVOLVED
by Vincent GRENIER 1976 / DCP / color / silent / 9' 00 |
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WORLD IN FOCUS
by Vincent GRENIER 1976 / DCP / color / silent / 16' 00 |
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SHADE
LA TOILE by Vincent GRENIER 1975 / DCP / color / silent / 8' 45 |
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CLOSER OUTSIDE
by Vincent GRENIER 1981-1982 / DCP / color / silent / 10' 00 |
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TIME'S WAKE (ONCE REMOVED)
by Vincent GRENIER 1987 / 16mm / color-b&w / silent / 12' 00 |
address |
Luminor Hôtel de Ville 20 rue du Temple 75004 Paris France |
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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 |
lightcone@lightcone.org | |
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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 |