MIRE: ARGENTIQUE DE NANTES
DESBORDAMIENTOS
Fundación Luis Seoane | Saturday June 7th | 11:00 pm | Free entry to all venues until full capacity. It will not be possible to enter the venues after the screening has started.
Mire is an association committed to experimental cinema that has been working in Nantes, France, since 1993. It is one of the longest-working laboratories self-run by artists in Europe. In addition to fostering experimental filmmaking, Mire organizes events, screenings, workshops and, since 2018, the Prisme–Argentique du futur festival. A delegation from Mire is visiting us in A Coruña, bringing with them some of the most stimulating works they have produced in recent years: we will be kicking off with a programme of films by Aurélie Percevault and Antoine Ledroit, followed by the Smokeshow performance by Aurélie Percevault and Pierre Pierre Pierre.
Aurélie Percevault (France) is a (hard-)core member of Mire (Nantes, France), an association dedicated to experimental cinema that runs a shared film laboratory and curates the PRISME festival. A project coordinator, workshop facilitator, curator and filmmaker, her work focuses on notions of the visible and invisible; latent danger with specific attention to the ritual dimension of projection.
Antoine Ledroit lives on the banks of the Loire estuary where the river meets the Atlantic Ocean. He works mostly as a projectionist in a cinema and for film festivals, though he is also a long-standing member of Mire, an association dedicated to experimental cinema. He shoots on Super 8 and 16 mm that he develops in Mire’s DIY film lab. Sometimes he also makes films, but he is a slow filmmaker. He also curates experimental film programmes and wandering screenings in his hometown.
Pierre Pierre Pierre (PPP) is a self-taught sound artist interested in dysfunctional electronics and situations. He plays with hand-made electronics, common and cheap hi-fi devices, and audio synthesis coding software. He is a former member of Cable#, the experimental music festival, and Mire, an experimental cinema collective and organisation in Nantes, France. PPP is now running 50 hz, setting up events for experimental arts in various places.
AURÉLIE PERCEVAULT & ANTOINE LEDROIT
CONFLUENCES & DETOURS
Antoine Ledroit and Aurélie Percevault share a sensitivity in their relationship with images.
Very long-time friends, they took their first steps side by side into the world of experimental cinema at Mire, Nantes. There, they discovered films that transformed them, making their first images and finding a new area of affinity. This programme is an opportunity to look back over the years, starting with films they made as a duo and moving on to individual works, always with their seal of complicity. Motifs that were initially incipient gradually asserted themselves. There is an attraction to light, playful gestures, matters of space and time, and a furtive human presence that act as a counterpoint to the might of magnificent landscapes. These are impressions on film, somewhere between dreams of eternity and a recognition of our own finite nature.
(“Is that all there is? If that’s all there is my friends, then let’s keep dancing.” Peggy Lee)
Inzwischen
Aurélie Percevault | 2012 | France | Super 8 | 3 min
In between, in the meantime. Coming and going. There and back to the vanishing point.
Sillages #3
Aurélie Percevault, Antoine Ledroit | 2010–2025 | France | Super 8, 16 mm | 8 min (Work in progress)
Reminiscences of a pastoral and ghostly roadtrip across Finland.
Sillages #2
Aurélie Percevault, Antoine Ledroit | 2014 | France | 16 mm | 5 min
A road movie with no cars. Webcam stills on Super 8 and 16 mm. A presence due to an absence. Condensation and repetition of the past; those fleeting moments captured and forgotten.
Les Herbes folles
Antoine Ledroit | 2018 | France | 16 mm | 4 min
From the roadsides to film. Grasses come to visit the lab.
A quelle distance tombe la foudre?
Aurélie Percevault | 2022 | France | 16 mm | 4 min
“Darkness comes when light fails.” (Derek Jarman quoting Aristotle in Chroma: A Book of Color).
Contemplating the danger, we hear it approaching. In a thunderstorm, there is lightning (the light) and thunder (the sound). The distance between the lightning and the thunder determines the distance to the danger. The film is made up of scattered photograms of light captured on the fly during a thunderstorm, black leader and lots and lots of tape. Each tape activates the projector’s loop regulator, a sound synonymous with potential danger for any discerning ear. Being a fragile single copy, it gets damaged each time it is shown. One day it will not be possible to project it anymore.
L’effet Bolduc
Aurélie Percevault | 2021 | France | 16 mm | 3 min
Bolduc is a decorative ribbon used to wrap gifts. It has the property of curling up when passing under a pair of open scissors. The ribbon was named after its home town of Bois-le-Duc, a name which as of the 17th century was changed to “Bolduc”. The 16 mm film does not twirl under the effect of scissors, but the layers of coloured emulsion, having been scratched, reveal dancing bluish variations.
“Like the decorative ribbon it is named after, the film winds, unfolds and twists in a deluge of sounds and colours with a bluish softness.” 13th Les Inattendus Festival, 2022
Les Horizons
Antoine Ledroit | 2024 | France | 16 mm | 9 min
Whatever happened to us, the horizons were there.
Whatever happens to us, the horizons are there.
Whatever will happen to us, the horizons will be there.
AURÉLIE PERCEVAULT & PIERRE PIERRE PIERRE
SMOKESHOW
A collective smokescreen session. Is it the screen that is burning or the speakers? A wake around the fire, a cinephile ritual in which 16 mm ghosts and remnants of pop culture will emerge from the smoke… The tangible medium revealed by a dematerialized surface. Moving around the fire to find the right point of view, where the lines of light are arranged into furtive images, we observe its perpetual re-combinations. After the spark and before the ashes…the smoke. With no goggles.
SMOKESHOW
Aurélie Percevault, Pierre Pierre Pierre | France | 16 mm projection, live sound coding, fire, smoke | 30 min