UNKINO
With Etienne CAIRE and Joyce Lainé : 16mm projectors
The UN proposes to the filmmakers Etienne Caire and Joyce Lainé to create a filmic device with the orchestra. The film is composed of 4 16mm reels projected simultaneously either in a panoramic frieze of 10m x 2,50m or in 6m x 4m (according to the possibilities of the places). Its duration is 30 minutes. If the sound and the image have their own independence, connections can nevertheless be established in an illustrative or narrative way or propose a totally abstract and subjective reading.
ETIENNE CAIRE EXPLAINS
HOW THIS INTERPRETATION OF THE FILM IS POSSIBLE:
"Supporting art cinema fixed? Well, not really. What happens when a frozen frame meets a white-hot projector window? Or how does an image breathe in the dark beat of the shutter?
During the projection I manipulate a projector, like a musician plays his instrument, to make a new continuum appear that does not exist on the film.
I use a device that allows me to intervene on 5 dimensions of the projection. I can at any time modify the speed of the film, the size of the image, the shape of the frame, the light intensity and the sound. It's not much and it's already a lot.
Playing with the projector in an improvisational way is all the more important because it renews the expressive capacities of the montage with each projection. Any modification of one of the dimensions of the projection transforms the relationship of each image to the others. It is an unknown montage, for the public and myself, that takes shape. A film appears which is built there before our eyes, with its own rhythm, and sometimes new actors, as when one slows down a projector, the shutter penetrates the scene and takes on unexpected roles.
This is why the form of the montage of events, the one fixed on the film, should not be a film in itself. It is important that the montage be neutral, inarticulate, devoid of motives. It is this constraint that forces me to intervene in the projection, imposes a sharp observation of events, a capacity to respond quickly in a controlled gesture, thus allowing the embryo of intention to blossom.
It is the acted projection that will reveal a sense of editing. Far from literary adaptations, it is the cinematographic apparatus itself that writes its script, sings its praises, to give birth to a true visual music, unsuspected and ephemeral."
This approach is in line with the articulations that the UN puts into play in the music it interprets. It is part of the artistic line we have been following since the beginning, which consists in questioning our practice through the relation of this one to others such as light (with Christophe Cardoen), electro-acoustic composition (Lionel Marchetti) or dance (with a ballet of 15 dancers)
REALIZATION
Etienne Caire produces figurative, abstract or found footage sequences in 16mm, a practical and cheap format. These sequences are produced from simple elements that he copies by permanently modifying the emulsion/light/chemical treatment relationship. Changing the quality and quantity of the light, using different development processes to the nearest photogram, bring nuances that make each copy a new original. There is no more hierarchy, a copy is in its turn copied and transformed and each generation can come, in whole or in part, to join the final montage.
It is also because it is manual work that a multitude of accidents occur during the processing chain. It is important to observe the effects of these accidents on the film and, if they prove interesting, to determine their causes so that they can be reproduced and improved in a voluntary manner. Many processes have been discovered as a result of careless manipulation.
This material produced in the laboratory is then edited, not to create a film, but in order to offer the greatest possible potential to an improvisation game.
Following a logic of fabrication close to the one used by E. Caire, the UN proposes to make a music from other musics and in particular those which accompanied many films which crossed our lives, by diverting them. Borrowing from the "cut-up" (use of random musical fragments rearranged to produce new music) certain techniques, we will use manipulated record players to reduce or increase the speed, we will subdivide the orchestra into string, brass and reed sections to ape Hollywood film music, we will mix known melodies related to cinema and create abstract and noisy material.
DEVICE
It consists of a screen of 12 m length and 2,50 m height on which it is possible to project 4 films in 4/3 format simultaneously one beside the other. This screen is stretched above the orchestra, the musicians are slightly behind it. The filmmaker is if possible with the orchestra, behind the screen, if the room allows it. If this is not the case, he projects from the room, in the middle of the audience. The audience is seated in front, as in the cinema.
It is a question of using the monstrous possibilities of the cinema, like a melting pot of elements to play an epic of cosmic inspiration devoted to our perception of the world.