RIGA IFF: Īsfilmu izlase Parīze, kādu to redz...Francijas Sinematēka
Selection of shorts Paris As Seen By… La Cinémathèque française
Casting a stone at other European metropolises, architect Le Corbusier once said that by taking a single step in Paris “we recover our ability to judge.” In collaboration with one of the world’s most important film memory institutions – the Cinémathèque Française in Paris, which has made appearances in French New Wave – RIGA IFF has created an extraordinary and untamed urban excursion, a city symphony selection to be screened in a single session.
The six short films, made between 1928 and 1999, reveal better-known and quieter neighbourhoods of Paris, odes to architectural forms, transitions of the seasons, human stories, and mythmaking about a metropolis pulsating with artistic ideas – that can also bring about hunger, alienation, and cold. The selection includes fiction, documentary, and hybrid works by journalist Lucie Derain, poetic realism classic René Clair, Belgian filmmaker Chantal Akerman, and other voices from the French cinematic space.
What is the city of light to the moving image? Paris is the birthplace of cinema, where brothers Lumière first amazed audiences with their “motion picture mechanism”. It is a post-war hub of cultural tumult and modernist waves, where younger generations push back against their elders, and out-of-towners and immigrants fight for the wellbeing of their offspring. Meanwhile, the middle class is ready to take to the streets to dissent, while tourists sigh and groan upon seeing the city’s most iconic buildings and massive developments. It also has everything we've seen in the scantiest shadows of pop culture imagination – and this six-film selection throws a stone-like challenge at the familiar, the seen, and the imagined.
Lucie Derain
Harmonies of Paris
Harmonies de Paris
FR
1928, 29’, no dialogue
Age 7+
Harmonies of Paris
Harmonies de Paris
FR
1928, 29’, no dialogue
Age 7+
A plane speeds into Paris. The tourists are destined to see it all: the figure of Notre-Dame and the crossroads of the Métro, where stone and steel meet and embrace. Pedestrian and vehicular traffic, no matter whether on road or water, old Paris and modern Paris, also workers hastily unloading firewood, sand, and coal. By night, the city shimmers with the lights of amusements that continue in Montmartre, while by day it is Paris by the water, it is the face of a woman.
A unique city symphony – Derain is the only known woman to have shot “urban cinematic harmony”. Bringing moving images closer to music and toying with the concept of synaesthesia, she created an impressionistic staccato in tune with the ideals of Ruttmann, Vigo and Vertov regarding a modern form that has its own address. Derain was a journalist, director, screenwriter, critic, founder of the Ciné-club de la femme, and a close collaborator of Henri Langlois, founder of the Cinémathèque Française.
François Reichenbach
Mannequins of Paris
Le Paris des Mannequins
FR
1956, 11’, fr
Age 7+
What if the city was an endless photoshoot? Women rocking the sharpest looks by the finest couturiers of Paris and the sharpest black eyeliner draw attention away from the city's best known streets, squares and panoramic views. Even the city has turned away from itself and gazes at the models. And the models – at times they turn away from the cameras and become Cities themselves.
Spontaneous and intuitive, always celebrating faces – the facial features of people as well as the public images of well-known figures – such is Reichenbach’s relaxed camera style. Having documented actress Brigitte Bardot, footballer Pelé, choreographer Maurice Béjart and many others, as well as co-directed F for Fake (1973) with Welles, he was always the servant to the idea that “the gaze is the way to still be amazed”. A pioneer of cinéma vérité, in this miniature Reichenbach plays with city iconography, touristic flânerie and voyeurist glances.
René Clair
The Tower
Tour (La)
FR
1928, 12’, no dialogue
Age 7+
The tower was supposed to be in Paris for only two decades, but has now become part of the city’s mythos. Little wonder that in nearly every Hollywood film it is “painted in” as the cliché of all clichés to indicate the location. It rises 300 metres above sea level, 75 floors of it. Over ten thousand tonnes of steel. When summer envelops the city, the pinnacle of the tower is eight centimetres off, and this film is a hymn to the spire that has pierced our memory.
Captivated by poetic realism, Clair takes us on a roaming visual trip – the film has no clear structure or narrative. It is “all that the eye allows”, blending in mixed media documentary observation, early drafts of the Eiffel Tower design, and stop motion animation. Made nearly 40 years after the completion of the tower in 1889 and its unveiling at the Exposition Universelle, the film continues to explore the obsession and fascination with this architectural icon so deeply ingrained in culture. Beneath it the city sprawls, and all of it is seized by the camera – snippet by snippet, a furtive glance here, an accidental framing there.
Emile Malespine
Arborescent Games
Jeux arborescents
FR
1931, 5’, no dialogue
Age 7+
What does it mean – “to touch with the camera”? A silent film recording in an untamed form – on film negative – reveals the outlines of Parisian architecture, streets and tree foliage. Almost a family film, in which modernist artist Malespine ventures into the city with his closest people – but suddenly the city geometry unfolds before them.
An associative flow and montage with currents less predictable than those of the Seine. This visual and kinetic impressionist catalogue was created by biologist, neuropsychiatrist, zoologist and mathematician Malespine, better known as a poet and artist, the founder of a Dadaist group in Lyon and the publication Manomètre. During the production and editing of this short film, he listened to Fugue in A minor by Bach and Sonata in D minor, K.9, by Scarlatti. The distribution copy itself was rediscovered in the archives of the Cinémathèque Française in 1997.
Cécile Decugis
Paris Winter (1986–1987)
Paris hiver (1986–1987)
FR
1999, 8’, no dialogue
Age 7+
The final great cold spell of the 20th century. The Champ de Mars, Hôtel des Invalides, the Grand Palais and the Bois de Boulogne. People in scarves, hats and heavy coats head to work, walk their dogs, shiver with every step, but the hurried pace does little to warm them. Far from tourist trails, closer to the daily Parisian life, routines and snow that covers what is usually revealed by souvenir trinkets.
One of the most notable editors of the French New Wave, Decugis – who worked on Godard’s Breathless and was a long-time creative partner to Rohmer – documented the metropolis during its coldest spell, from the end of 1986 to early 1987. Initially shot on Super 8 film, the short was later digitised. Decugis observes the city through her lens, allowing quiet chatter, barking, bitter cold and a minimalist soundtrack to unfold.
Chantal Akerman
I'm Hungry, I'm Cold
J'ai faim, j'ai froid
FR
1984, 13’, fr
Age 7+
Two girls on the threshold of the city. They are freezing, constantly smoking and poring over brasserie menus. Having left Brussels behind, they are ready to conquer Paris. Repeating the words “I’m hungry, I’m cold” – which becomes a game between them – they try to find out what the city has to offer two girls in leather jackets without a penny. This is how awkwardly survival blends with dreams.
Called a musical number in which no one sings, Akerman’s fiction short is a subtle satire on the mythology of “the city of big opportunities”. As she continues exploring modern women’s survival – most famously known from Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975), which Sight&Sound called the greatest film of all time – the Belgian director here employs a more ironic form. The two protagonists – played by Maria de Medeiros of Pulp Fiction (1994) and Akerman’s favourite Pascale Salkin – use themselves as weapons against poverty and see physical intimacy as just as meaningless as their successor in Fat Girl (2001) by Breillat more than a decade later.
| Event | Date / Time | Venue | Price | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| RIGA IFF: Īsfilmu izlase Parīze, kādu to redz...Francijas Sinematēka | Su 19/10/2025 19:00 | Latvijas Nacionālā bibliotēka, Ziedoņa zāle | 6.00 - 7.00 |
| Event | RIGA IFF: Īsfilmu izlase Parīze, kādu to redz...Francijas Sinematēka |
|---|---|
| Date / Time | Su 19/10/2025 19:00 |
| Venue | Latvijas Nacionālā bibliotēka, Ziedoņa zāle |
| Price | 6.00 - 7.00 |
| Event | RIGA IFF: Īsfilmu izlase Parīze, kādu to redz...Francijas Sinematēka |
|---|---|
| Date / Time | Su 19/10/2025 19:00 |
| Venue | Latvijas Nacionālā bibliotēka, Ziedoņa zāle |
| Price | 6.00 - 7.00 |
No results have been found for your request.