The Electric Forest, an atypical cinema rooted in Toulouse
As with any plant organism, the Electric Forest draws its nourishment from its roots. And his go back to a trip undertaken by the two people behind the project, Agnès Salson and Mikael Arnal, on the roads of France and Europe, to “imagine a new model of cinema”. The two young people visited a hundred cinemas in France in 2014 and then a hundred in twenty European countries the following year in order to learn from best practices. What convinces them to offer modular places, which incorporate the creative process and involve the public. “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, ”says Agnès Salson. This is how they were tested, in 2018, an ephemeral cinema at the Halles de la Cartoucherie, in Toulouse.
First shoots that strengthened their will, and chance encounters allowed them to find a framework conducive to its development. Today, La Forêt Electrique is indeed part of the Eux-Re project, in the Faubourg Bonnefoy district, winner in 2019 of the Draw me Toulouse call for projects. In addition to an economic center dedicated to the social and circular economy, the project also includes the construction of sixty housing units, including forty-two participants, on a former industrial site from the 1950s. be part of this neighborhood dynamic, have a space of 1000 m2, in which she wants to create “a cinema inhabited by artists, a place that makes films circular, where the public is in contact with the stages of creation “.
The programming, articulated around genre films, animated films, documentaries and independent films, will give pride of place to the production process, via making-ofs, meetings… “We know the residences around the theater or the ‘art. We want to test this model for the cinema,” adds Agnès Salson, a graduate of La Femis. From next spring, for the second season, the idea is to create a community of creators around the place, “both around the sets, the music, the costumes, in an artisanal logic”.
A first season to build the final project
Since the beginning of September, and until the end of October, La Forêt Électrique has welcomed the general public to this former industrial carpentry. If the final opening should take place in 2025, the projection room, and its sixty seats, is already alongside a café, open from Wednesday to Friday afternoon, a workshop and the team’s offices, in a space still away from its final layout. For Agnès Salson and Mikael Arnal, it was important 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.
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.
Paul Perie
On the photo of a: The tribe of The Electric Forest, with Agnès Salson, in the center in the foreground, alongside Fabien Ferrari, one of the co-managers. Credit: Rémy Gabalda – ToulÉco. // The Toulouse public responded to the first screenings. Credit: Jaufret Barrot.