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Roberto Rossellini Jacques Grandclaude soixanteDixSept Marie Auvity Brion Gysin Gordon Matta-Clark When Rossellini filmed Melvin Moti the centre pompidou An exhibition for the Centre Pompidou’s 40th anniversary exhibition press preview press officer : Corinna Ewald 11 March - Thursday 9 March [email protected] 16 July 2017 advance registration required +33 (0)1 64 62 77 05 press kit Contents SoixanteDixSept (SeventySeven) - p. 3 When Rossellini filmed the Centre Pompidou - p. 4 Works and artists - p. 5 Available images - p. 8 Elsewhere in Seine-et-Marne - p. 10 Events Calendar - p. 12 Save the date - p. 13 The Art Center - p. 14 Informations - p. 15 partner bodies media partners cover image : Roberto Rossellini, shoot of Le Centre Georges Pompidou, 1977, © Fondation Genesium / Jacques Grandclaude © D.R. 2 - press kit - SoixanteDixSept SoixanteDixSept(SeventySeven) Centre Pompidou's SoixanteDixSept With exhibitions and a festival, three key contemporary art venues in Seine-et- 40th anniversary Marne (France's département no. 77), recall Three exhibitions for the Centre the emblematic date – 1977 – of the Pompidou's 40th anniversary opening of the Centre Pompidou, that In 2017, the Centre Pompidou is "power plant for decentralisation", and celebrating its 40th anniversary from 11 march to 16 july 2017 revive the spirit of an era on a broad throughout France. To share the press preview thursday 9 march, advance geographic front. celebration with a wider audience, registration required it will be presenting a completely opening saturday 11 march To keep visitors on their toes and ideas on new programme of exhibitions, the move, the three art centres will be outstanding loans and various SoixanteDixSept displaying works created or acquired in events throughout the year. When Rossellini filmed the Centre 1977, works by artists born in 1977, and Pompidou works focusing on the Centre Pompidou Exhibitions, shows, concerts and meetings at La Ferme du Buisson, Noisiel and its history. will be staged in 40 French cities in partnership with museums, contemporary SoixanteDixSept The project takes a look at a specific vision art centres, performance halls, a festival, a Hôtel du Pavot… of art and society, a crucial utopic impulse key player in France’s cultural and artistic at frac Île-de-france - Le château/Parc that still fuels contemporary creativity. This fabric and many more. culturel de Rentilly-Michel Chartier – reassessment forty years down the track Bussy-Saint-Martin brings an understanding of the museum's At the crossroads of different disciplines, the active role in history as a force for programme for this 40th anniversary SoixanteDixSept conservation but also for shaping a future. illustrates the Centre Pompidou’s Experiment commitment to cultural institutions in the at Le Centre Photographique d’Île-de- regions outside of Paris – essential players in France, Pontault-Combault the dissemination and development of art in our time. press kit - SoixanteDixSept - 3 When Rossellini filmedthe centre pompidou Curator In 1977, Roberto Rossellini Out of this presentation arises the issue of Julie Pellegrin devoted his last film to the opening how we see the museum and what it of the Centre Pompidou, as produces: its mix of democratisation and personal testimony to the advent mass culture, and the invention of a new of a new artistic, architectural and kind of visitor, a new form of museography Roberto Rossellini cultural modernity. Now, after and a new relationship with society. Jacques Grandclaude forty years of neglect, his film has What kind of memory lives on in museums, resurfaced. The Italian director and what projections, critiques and Marie Auvity approached the museum in a way reshapings is it subject to? Brion Gysin nobody else ever has, catching spectators' stunned amazement on In response to Rossellini's objective Gordon Matta-Clark the spot. This extraordinary approach, works from the Centre Melvin Moti adventure is revealed by hitherto Pompidou provide resolutely subjective unshown archives from the film's artistic visions. When the Italian was producer Jacques Grandclaude filming, Brion Gysin was investing his and Marie Auvity's documentary photographs of the facade with his private account of its making. In response hallucinations and Gordon Matta-Clark had to this remarkable material, works already used the building site for Conical by Brion Gysin, Gordon Matta- Intersect, his most famous social/ Clark and Melvin Moti from the architectural work. When the Italian was Centre Pompidou collection offer filming, Melvin Moti was being born, and subjective visions of the museum thirty years later he came up with No and its history. Show, a recreation of a guided tour of a museum containing no artworks. A The brand new Centre Pompidou opened "performance" made, he said, for the in 1977, offering the public its first taste of future, "a future we're not even ready for Contemporary art. Roberto Rossellini yet." Just as we weren't ready for those devoted his last film to this historic baffling objects, the Centre Pompidou and moment. In doing so he testified to the Rossellini's film. advent of a new artistic, architectural and cultural modernity. With a camera in association with the Genesium constantly on the move and an amazing Foundation and Studio l’Équipe system of hidden microphones, he filmed the museum in a way nobody else ever has, catching spectators' stunned amazement on the spot. Rarely screened over these last 40 years, this remarkable work has been made the beating heart of the exhibition. It is accompanied by hitherto unshown archival material from producer and comrade in arms Jacques Grandclaude: a step by step video montage of the director at work, 2500 photographs of the shoot, and hours of sync rushes recorded with Rossellini's hidden microphones. This immersive experience of the Italian master's method and the Centre Pompidou's first days is revisited here in a film specially made for the exhibition, in which Marie Auvity gets the original crew to talk about the making of the Rossellini film and its relationship with the Pompidou's creative spirit. 4 - press kit - SoixanteDixSept Works and artists Roberto Rossellini, Jacques Grandclaude, Marie Auvity, Le Centre Georges Rossellini au travail Le dernier film (The Last Pompidou, 1977 (Rossellini at work), Film), 2017 Transferred from 35mm film, 1977 2K video, colour, sound, 20 mins colour, sound, 58 mins Montage of transferred 16 mm © Fondation Genesium / Jacques So as to put Rossellini's film into a films, colour, sound, 120 mins Grandclaude contemporary perspective, La Ferme du © Fondation Genesium /Jacques Buisson commissioned a film from visual Grandclaude 1977. France's Ministry of Foreign Affairs artist and producer Marie Auvity. In the decides to commission a film about the wake of Rossellini filming Beaubourg and Roberto Rossellini's last producer and opening of the Centre Pompidou, with an Grandclaude filming Rossellini, she comrade in arms, Jacques Grandclaude eye to international media attention. decided to pursue the story within a story worked tirelessly with him from January to Working with the production company by filling in its neglected background. May 1977, just before the director's death in Communauté de Cinéma "Création 9 What she offers is a journey through Rome. Heading up the Communauté de Information", it called on one of the world's memory, a reconstruction based on the Cinéma "Création 9 Information" production greatest filmmakers, Roberto Rossellini, to recollections of Jacques Grandclaude and company, he produced Le Centre Georges bear witness to this historic event: the birth punctuated by interviews with the other Pompidou while at the same time filming of a globally acclaimed cultural model. main participants – Claude Mollard, Patrick the master "at work" and documenting the Imhaus, Alain Bergala, Yvette Mallet and process step by step, from the beginning of Discovering the Centre Pompidou as he others – in the key places concerned. the shoot to the end. Much more than just a filmed it, Rossellini became fascinated by making-of, these hitherto unseen rushes, his subject and the reactions it was with their emphasis on the creative triggering. The upshot was a one-off Unshown archives dimension, are unique testimony to the cinematic wonder: the camera moved This film "triptych" will be rounded off by Rossellini method and the relationship systematically at eye level along dolly remarkable archival material from the between the cinema and the museum. tracks laid down inside the museum; and Genesium Foundation collection. the traditional voice-over commentary was "I know of no equivalent to these rushes of dropped in favour of visitors' spontaneous 2500 photographs taken during shooting Rossellini shooting Le Centre Georges reactions, caught on the spot by a crafty in the form of 46 contact sheets. This Pompidou. I have never seen a film follow network of hidden microphones. goldmine of on-the-spot images provides so closely, and with such exactness, an account not only of the shooting, but intelligence and creativity, a filmmaker at Working two months before his death, the also of a human adventure summed up in work." founder of Neo-Realism turned this the ambience of the first days of the Centre Alain Bergala remarkable, unexpected encounter into his Pompidou: the works being hung, the ultimate legacy. Today this film plunges us museum teams and artists (notably Jean back into the public's stunned discovery of Tinguely) busying themselves in the Contemporary art. And offers rare, different spaces, and the surrounding exemplary insights into the possibilities for urban and social context. filming museums and exhibitions. 20 hours of hitherto unseen sync rushes not used in the film. Listening to them gives us a far broader vision of the spectators' reactions and comments. Here we are listening "blind": not always knowing which works are being referred to, we have to resort to the power of our imagination.