The Electric Forest in Toulouse, when a cinema is set up in an old carpentry!
Until the end of October, the first spectators can discover a film in this former industrial carpentry in the Bonnefoy district, behind the Matabiau station in Toulouse. If the place is far from being finalized, since the definitive opening must take place in 2025, the projection room, and its 70 seats, is already alongside a café, open from Wednesday to Friday afternoon, a workshop and the team offices. A desire of Agnès Salson and Mikael Arnal, the two people behind the project who wanted to “activate the project upstream” to federate a community around this place. “We wanted to collect the keys as quickly as possible to benefit from three years of experimentation, to be able to design the space as well as possible and remain as open as possible”, explains the young woman. Each season is thus built around a theme linked to the identity of the future location.
The roots of The Electric Forest draw their energy from a journey undertaken by Agnès and Mikael on the roads of France and Europe, to “imagine a new model of cinema”. “The aging of independent cinema audiences is worrying. There is a necessary evolution, you have to think of the rooms as a space for living and meeting, ”assures Agnès Salson. After having visited a hundred rooms in France in 2014 then a hundred in 20 European countries the following year in order to draw inspiration from best practices, the two young people are convinced that they needed modular places, which contain the creative process and involve the public. After an ephemeral cinema tested at the Halles de la Cartoucherie, in Toulouse, in 2018, this ambition has found a favorable framework within the Eux-Re project, around the social and circular economy, winner in 2019 of the call for projects Draw me Toulouse.
Create a community of creators
On this space of 1,000 m2, the team of La Forêt Electrique therefore envisions “a cinema inhabited by artists, a place which circulates films, where the public is in contact with the stages of creation”. A science fiction film is also being produced on the premises and the programming, articulated around genre films, animated films, documentaries and independent films, will give pride of place to the production process, via making-of, encounters… “We are familiar with residencies around theater or art and we want to test this model for cinema”, adds the co-manager, a graduate of La Femis. From the spring of 2023, Agnès Salson thus wishes to see a community of creators created around this place, “both around the sets, the music, the costumes, in an artisanal logic. »
Ultimately, the Electric Forest, supported by local authorities and the CNC, wishes to have two cinemas with daily programming, and associated with existing independent cinemas such as the ABC or the American Cosmograph, with the Cinémathèque de Toulouse and the different Toulouse design schools.