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Places and Monuments-3
Location
Main screening room
Date
May 13th, 2021
Duration
70 min
Cycle
Pierre Hébert : Places and Monuments

Depuis maintenant plusieurs années, le cinéaste d’animation Pierre Hébert travaille à une série de films de différents formats, sous le titre générique de Lieux et monuments. Travaillés parfois comme des carnets de voyages, mais aussi comme autant de films essais géopolitiques, cette série ambitieuse est unique dans le parcours au long cours de Pierre Hébert. Nous allons présenter la série complète en quatre séances successives, en débutant par la projection en primeur du plus récent volet, Le mont Fuji vu d’un train en marche.

Cycling Utrecht
Directed by
Pierre Hébert
Language
SD
Origins
Quebec
Year
2015
Duration
14 min
Genre
animation
Format
Digital
Synopsis

The video presents a simulation of the installation. It is a video installation with two screens set side by side, on which two loops of unequal lengths (13:50 to the left and 11:43 to the right) are playing. The two loops are thus constantly lagging and new relations are constantly created between the two visual and sound components of this work with no beggining and no ending. Over a period of time that goes largey beyong what a single visitor can possibly stand, an exploration of all the possible relations between the two loops is going on progressively. The images have been shot on November 11 2014 in Utrecht in locations situated along the streets that the race will follow. Each of the two loops is made up of four long segments and three shorter one that are used as transitions. Three of the main segments have been shot according to two adjacent left/right frames. Following the progressive lagging of the projected loops, there are moments when the corresponding left/right frames appear simulteanously creating a temporary effect of panorama over the two screens. As these coupled segments have been placed in a different order on the two loops, it is only alternatively that they can appear simultaneously an create an effect of panorama. A structure of correspondances and echos is thus created varying with the lagging unwinding of the loops. Taking into account this difference of length, it would take 7.5 days for the loops to return to their initial state. This installation is number seven in the Places and Monuments series. As with all the other opus of this series, the live action images have been submitted to a process of digital processing in order to give them a greater temporal and spatial density and animation inserts were added to create points of intensity that tell you were to look. In this case, the inseted images of Tour de France are disputing the monumental pole with images of statue that are along the route of the race, and are put in tension with the normal day to day use of the bike that is a very important characteristic of this city.

Cycling Utrecht
Berlin – The Passage of Time
Directed by
Pierre Hébert
Language
VOSTF
Origins
Quebec
Year
2013
Duration
36 min
Genre
animation
Format
Digital
Synopsis

The video shows a simulation of the installation of 50:41. The Berlin – The Passage of Time video installation is shown on four HD flat screens positioned horizontally one beside the other. Four video clips of different lengths (between seven and twelve minutes) are looped on those screens. Since the loops are of different lengths, they are constantly lagging one in relation to the others so that the viewer is facing ever changing combinations of the different segments of images and sounds. Each of the segments is based on shooting done in Berlin in July 2012, august 2013 and October 2013. All those shootings have to do with scenes of daily life, but in the same time, they also refer to different episodes of the recent history of the city of Berlin, from the Weimar Republic to the Second World War, the monumental buildings of the DDR, the 1949 blockade and airlift, the Wall and so on to the current rebuilding of the city center. Some segments (images shot from the S-Bahn, the parade of the tourists boats on the Spree, the constant traffic of bicycles) have a function of transitions and constitute leitmotivs that are present in all four screens. There are two segments devoted to two major intellectual figures related to Berlin, that are dear to me, Bertolt Brecht and Walter Benjamin, two characters that had crossed over destinies during WW II. Overall the piece is particularly inspired by different benjaminian themes, like the image of the "flanneur", a special understanding of history and of the relationship between present and pass, the notions of dialectic images and allegory. Each shot is first submitted to digital processing in order to achieve a greater density of the material. Eventually, meshes of animated lines are added. The objective is, while keeping a strong connection with the initial raw live material, to modify the viewer’s perception, to allegorize those fragments of daily life, and to create a sort of historical vertigo. At another more formal level, there is a construction of moments of intensity that creates at the level of the four screens a composition of dynamic chocks constantly reenacted by the lag between the four different loops. This is superposed to the equally shifting thematic connections between what is seen on the different screens. This combinatory and expanded editing on multiple levels invites the viewer to position himself alternately in the overall contemplation of the changes in the global installation, and in the concentrated observation of specific fragments while moving from one screen to the other. The longest loop is 13 minutes, so the complete set of images of the piece can be seen in that length of time. But, because of the combinatory manner in which it is constructed, it is possible to stay in hypnotic contemplation much longer in front of the installation. This installation piece is subtitled Places and Monuments 6” because it is number 6 of a wider project that will eventually include a large number of glimpses of the course of things from all over the world. Up to now in this series of works, four short films were completed : Praha-Florenc (no 1), Place Carnot – Lyon (no 2), Thunder River (no 4), and John Cage – Halberstadt (no 5). A Tokyo piece (no 3) is unfinished. A web version of Berlin – The Passage of Time was put on line at the time of the first presentation of the installation.

Berlin – The Passage of Time
The Statue of Robert E. Lee in Charlottesville
Directed by
Pierre Hébert
Language
VOSTF
Origins
Quebec
Year
2018
Duration
26 min
Genre
Animation, documentary
Format
Digital
Synopsis

On August 11 and 12, a show of force by neo-nazis and white supremacist groups in Charlottesville, Virginia, to oppose the removal of the statue of General Robert E. Lee, leads to violent clashes and leave several deaths and many wounded. On August 23, the Town Hall decides to cover the statue with black as a sign of mourning. On August 28, we leave for Virginia to shoot the shrouded statue as departure point for a reflection about the historical and political implication of the raging debate on the fate of the Confederate statues in the USA.

The Statue of Robert E. Lee in Charlottesville
You Look Like Me
Directed by
Pierre Hébert
Language
VOA
Origins
Quebec
Year
2014
Duration
6 min
Genre
animation
Format
Digital
Synopsis

I passed you by, I only passed you by, on the street, in the subway, or rather I saw you, I only saw you, on television, in the newspapers, I read the story of your life, I saw photos of you, I saw you passing by, only passing by, but I could’nt forget your eyes, they said to me :“Little brother, little sister, you look like me.”

You Look Like Me