Cycle Jean-Denis Bonan – Toulouse Cinémathèque
The film library dedicated to a cycle by director Jean-Denis Bonan
Discover or watch again the films of Jean-Denis Bonan. This is what the Toulouse Cinematheque from February 9 to 12, 2022.
“It was in May 2018. For the fiftieth anniversary of May 68, we had set up a program bringing together activist cinema and films from the Zanzibar group, with the idea that militant cinema invented an aesthetic through its ethical questions while Zanzibar imposed an ethics by his aesthetic will. We then invited Jean-Denis Bonan to tell us about the adventure of the Cinélutte group, a group of militant filmmakers that he had created with Mireille Abramovici in 1973, in the logical continuation of another collective that they both already had. set up in 1967: the ARC, for Cinematographic Research Workshop ”, relates Franck Lubet, in charge of the cinematheque’s programming. He adds: “Jean-Denis was unable to come at the last moment. But an appointment had been made to go further in his own production. Because if we already knew Jean-Denis Bonan through the history of Cinélutte, whose films have an important place in the collections of the Cinémathèque, we also know him through the prism of Extreme Cinema with Tristesse des anthropophages (his first short professional footage censored for nearly fifty years) and The Executioner Woman (left in the drawers for as long before Luna Park allowed it to finish and release in 2015) that we presented during the festival ”.
“This retrospective was built by Jean-Denis Bonan himself. He chose the films from among all those he made, as well as their arrangement, like an artist (he is also a visual artist) supervises an exhibition of his works, like a poet (he also writes) makes a selection in his texts to edit a collection. And he will accompany him, with his family: Francis Lecomte, producer and distributor of his films with Luna Park, singer Daniel Laloux, traveling companion of the group Gong, who will sing the song for the occasion and Domi Bergougnoux, poet, who read some of his poems between two films. Appointment had been made. Appointment is given to you ”, explains Franck Lubet.
Meeting-projection with Jean-Denis Bonan
Jean-Denis Bonan will be in Toulouse from February 9 to 12, 2022. There will be many opportunities to meet him. He will present all the films screened as part of the retrospective devoted to him and will discuss with the public on Friday February 11 at 7 p.m. Thus, among the feature films it will be possible to see Madame la France. The story takes place in Tunisia, in the small village of Takrouna, Kassem dreams of winning France when construction begins on the Club du Soleil, a holiday camp for tourists. A baroque and colorful film, an anti-neocolonialist pamphlet but always funny, even burlesque. A film locked in its box since 1977 and resuscitated by the alchemist Jean-Denis Bonan in 2020. Among the films proposed for the screening Mathieu-Fou released in 1967. This achievement is a free evocation of a news item from the 1960s. A film about the cracks of passion, which navigates between romanphoto, illustrations and melodrama. Mathieu is in love with Muguette but Muguette is married to Forin. What if Forin burned?
For those who wish, it is accessible to watch “The School of Fools” on February 10, 2022. A unique, singular and unclassifiable experience, filmed at the Borde clinic in Cour-Cheverny, near Blois, during the winter of 1967. They just say “The world is not going well”. Dispossessed of his film, Jean-Denis Bonan resumes editing fifty-one after filming. This session will be presented by Jean-Denis Bonan with an interlude by Domi Bergougnoux who will read two of his poems. The next day, The Killers of Ordinary preview will be screened in the presence of Jean-Denis Bonan and preceded by a song by Daniel Laloux.