LE MAL DES ARDENTS
France
A stunned crowd faces a fire.
The threat has no name, a diffuse anguish spreads.
Fear needs to be conjured, fire must be turned into a sign.
The film proposes an immersive experience surrounding the spectators of a fire, diving into the realm of their different interpretations. Always off-screen, the fire becomes a signifier inflated by the imagination, which crystallises a certain climate of societal tension.
The project started with the images I filmed of the people facing the fire of Notre-Dame de Paris. The emotions that spread through the crowd and the mass behaviors I witnessed were then reconstructed using photogrammetry and sound staging. The reconstitution of this moment through the film testifies an atmosphere that is still contemporary: an era marked by a globalised loss of reference points between information and rumor, by the rise of nationalism and identity-based radicalisations, and by the media that which only stir up conflicts for their own profit. It is a reflection of my own stupor among this anxious crowd, an attempt to grasp this climate of group psychosis that seems to be spreading on the networks, in France, and elsewhere.
A stunned crowd faces a fire.
The threat has no name, a diffuse anguish spreads.
Fear needs to be conjured, fire must be turned into a sign.
