Simon Arazi

The former French colonies in Central and West Africa have been independent since 1960, but most of these countries still use the currency of the former oppressor: the CFA franc. It was linked to the French franc when it was introduced, so the national bank in Paris controlled monetary policy. Now the currency has a fixed exchange rate with the euro. The link with the European currency strongly influences the monetary policy of CFA countries. And that means the value of the CFA franc is defined by political decisions taken elsewhere, rather than by the domestic economy.

Every day, the Carlingford ferry takes travelers from Northern Ireland to Ireland, a short sea voyage across an invisible border that invites reflection on the consequences of Brexit.

Juste un Mouvement is a free take on La Chinoise, a Jean-Luc Godard movie shot in 1967 in Paris. Reallocating its roles and characters fifty years later in Dakar, and updating its plot, this new version offers a meditation on the relationship between politics, justice and memory. Although not anymore alive, Omar Blondin Diop, the only actual Maoist student in the original movie, now becomes the key character.

This is the portrait of an industrial city with its collapses, mutations, landscapes and language. A film that features René Magritte, a camp of homeless people, key figures in urban revival, the inventor of the Big Bang, Les Zèbres (Royal Charleroi Sporting Club) , socialism, the mute astonishment of childhood…

This is de facto a film about a film, with the only difference being that the focus is exclusively on the extras. They are filmed while waiting to take their turn, while conversing with others, and thinking about their performances. Although they take their duties very seriously and long to be stars, for the filmmakers, they’re just people that can be coordinated as necessary, nothing more. This film, on the contrary, gives them full consideration, revealing their personalities, what they experience, and what they dream of. The footage comes from many different places where movies are made, involving extras from all different nationalities.

Literature and psychoanalysis are summoned here around a mythical figure of the intellectual, artistic and psychoanalytical history of pre-dictatorship Argentina: Oscar Masotta. Having introduced Lacan’s thought in Latin America as well as structuralism, having taken action in defense of Pop art, and having himself initiated legendary performances, Masotta is at the heart of that wonderful Fifties and Seventies effervescence. But for as distinct a character as this one, Dora Garcia neither films the biopic, nor does she merely deliver the servile reconstruction of an anthology of his « actions ». Better still, and through an impure mix of both, with other elements at the forefront, she proposes floating evocation, much like psychoanalytical listening.

The Third Part of the Third Measure creates an encounter with the militant minimalism of black avant-garde queer composer, pianist and vocalist Julius Eastman. The film focuses on what The Otolith Group describe as ‘an experience of watching in the key of listening’, invoking political feelings of defiance and the collective practice of movement building that participates in the global struggles against neoreactionary authoritarianism. The Third Part of the Third Measure invites viewers to attend to exemplary ecstatic aesthetics of black radicalism that Eastman himself once described as ‘full of honour, integrity and boundless courage’.

The Radiant explores the aftermath of March 11, 2011, when the Tohoku earthquake triggered a tsunami that killed many thousands and caused the partial meltdown of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant on the east coast of Japan. Burdened by the difficult task of representing the invisible aftermath of nuclear fallout, The Radiant travels through time and space to invoke the historical promises of nuclear energy and the threats of radiation that converge in Japan in the months immediately following the disaster.

Calcutta, 1950: Satyajit Ray directs his first film and, by opening his eyes on his country's realities, breaks every convention of Indian cinema. During twenty-five years, Ray's personal photographer Nemai Gosh will be his shadow. This movie tells their parallel destinies, it ventures Satyajit Ray's extraordinary artistic journey through the obsessive lens of Nemai Gosh.