APRES COUP Gus Van Sant: before / after the «death of cinema»
The Fondation d’Entreprise Ricard invites you to « Après coup », a series of monthly gatherings, dialogues on the latest in contemporary thinking.
« Après coup » proposes a critical analysis on recent events, revealing distinctive features of the contemporary.
From Mala Noche in 1985, to the recent Harvey Milk, Patrice Blouin will evoke the singular career of the filmmaker Gus van Sant, with Stéphane Bouquet and Jean-Marc Lalanne, the authors of « Gus van Sant », a book which was recently published by the Cahiers du Cinéma.
« Where is cinema headed? », was the question, last fall, at the Centre Georges Pompidou.
And this question, innocent apparently, underlined a landslide. Since years, it seemed cinema could actually only be considered from the viewpoint of its end. Outside the (historical) idea of « mannerism », and instead of the (artistic) concept of « postmodernism », the vague notion of « death of cinema », suggested by Serge Daney in the early 80ies, seemed to pave the way of the seventh art.
To ask anew the question of the future of cinema also indicates a crucial change of paradigm: not only the end of a certain rapport to the past, but also, and more profoundly, the renouncement of its singular status. More than a simple time frame, the « death of cinema » has long prevailed as a distinctive sign, as a heraldic sign, to signify the predominance of cinema on the other forms of audiovisual productions. Nowadays, to talk about the future of the seventh art presupposes, conversely, to inscribe it as an instance among others in the general regime of images: it calls for an abrogation, or a questioning, of a status of exception.
Among all the filmmakers who have lived through those years of gloomy isolation, Gus van Sant is one of the few who, currently, seems able to effortlessly bring this transition about. Probably because he has maintained, since the beginning of his career, a surprisingly pacified relationship, both towards the history of the seventh art, and towards the secondary forms of audiovisual production.
BIOGRAPHIES
Stéphane Bouquet is an author and a script-writer. He has been an editor at the Cahiers du cinéma
Jean-Marc Lalanne is the chief editor of Les Inrockuptibles, after he held the same position at Les cahiers du cinéma. He is the co-author, with Philippe Azoury, of Fantômas, style modern, and of Cocteau and cinema, desordres.
Patrice Blouin is an aesthetics professor at the ESAH. He is a former editor at the Cahiers du cinéma, and at Les Inrockuptibles. He has co-managed the special edition of Art Press: « Burlesque, a modern adventure »
