Olivier Marquézy

Antes de abandonar os palcos por problemas neurológicos em 1972, Thelonious Monk fez sua última apresentação três anos antes, em Paris. Na ocasião, após o show, Monk se dirigiu para um canal de televisão francês onde seria entrevistado e tocaria algumas músicas. Devido a sua situação mental, o programa não chegou a ser exibido. Monk fala pouco, se expressa com um mínimo de palavras e não consegue desenvolver um papo fluente com o jornalista, mas sua capacidade musical ainda está intacta. Este é o registro do ocaso comovente de um gênio que pouco a pouco nos deixava.

When French writer Marguerite Duras (1914-96) published her novel The Sea Wall in 1950, she came very close to winning the prestigious Prix Goncourt. Meanwhile, in Indochina, France was suffering its first military defeats in its war against the Việt Minh, the rebel movement for independence.

Gustave Folcher, a French farmer, wrote in his 1939 diary that the summer had been long and hot. He was not alone. Many other anonymous French men and women wrote of the beauty and warmth of those summer months and how threats of war were far from their minds. Through home movies, diaries and letters, One Last Summer describes the final weeks of peace in France and the mix of blindness, denial and prophetic clear-sightedness of those facing the war that was about to unfold.

Using testimonies by pioneers and witnesses of the times, delve into the feverish visual culture the media generated – with far-fetched examples of canine television games, seduction manuals, aerobics class while holding a baby, among others.