Cécile Ravel

Chers Émile, Louis, Auguste Georges et les autres...

Cécile Ravel

A performance-projection produced for the 11th aniversary De Nevers à l'aube film Dear, Louis,Auguste, Georges and the others... An homage to the pioneers of the cinema and animation cinema. The main steps of the history of projection and the reproduction of movement are impersonated by baby Margot as she moves about on all fours. Different animation and shooting techniques are used here, all of them closed to the pioneers‚ experiments. Margot's wandering takes place on a sea shore lined with cabanas reminiscent of the film set «Around a cabana» by Émile Reynaud.

Back to London

Cécile Ravel

Shot mainly in the train on the way from Nevers to London and back to Nevers, as well as in the streets of the English capital, the film focusses on constant motion: the motion of trains, buses and passers-by, mirroring my daughter's inner journey.Texts written simultaneously in French and in English on transparent material become integrated into the scenery, itself constantly traversed by trajectories. Written in the style of poems dedicated to my daughter, they line the whole itinerary, at times stuck to windows , whether of trains, stations or museums, at times held by people met in the street.

Plume

Cécile Ravel

Plume (Feather) tells the story of my daughter when she was suffering from anorexia. (Cécile Ravel)

De l'autre côté du miroir I & II

Cécile Ravel

Inspired by Lewis Carroll the projection shows Alice breaking into the Arnolfini couple's bedroom (itself a painting by Van Eyck). The projection tests the scoping device set up by Van Eyck. The spectator located behind the canvas watches Alice in her turn trapped in the eye of the mirror.

Bacchanales Neversoises-Mantouanes

Cécile Ravel

A ten-year old girl's birthday party in Nevers and its relation to the Te Palace's Bacchanalia in Mantova. Real and animated characters (adapted from Giulio Romano's frescoes) are athered through collage means and share a banquet. This film-performance was produced for the tenth anniversary of the De Nevers à lAube film festival.

Summerland (Le Pays de l'Été)

Cécile Ravel

Summerland is a territory where human beings and animals are exchanging a part of their souls and bodies. Here metaporphoses are constant, corrupting borders and boundaries between species. Many transformations occur secretly within the depth fo the forest. In Summerland the point of view is always ambiguous, submitted itself to a constant movement between reality and surreality.

Exîle

Cécile Ravel

A meditation on the theme of Mediterranean exile, focussing on Sète, the town where I was born. I believe an island is a metaphor of exile, that is to say a place one longs to reach but that once reached, one wants to leave for other horizons. A place of constant metamorphosis.

Cyclamen Persicum

Cécile Ravel

Adel Ghezal, Flavie Blanchard

A super 8 diptich as an adaptation of Orpheus' myth from Ovid's Metamorphoses. The device objectifies the gap between Orpheus and Eurydice. Being part of the terrestrial world, Orpheus appears on the upper screen, whereas Eurydice, belonging to the netherworld, appears on the lower screen.

Suzanne au bain

Cécile Ravel

Suzannah's life at the mercy of two elder's lust, meting out justice Suzannah's picture, centered differently is fragmented on various media (her legs being filmed under the water, her face sinking in and her body being framed in a TV set). The picture appears intermittently within the two elder's scope of vision. The device turns the spectators and the two old men into expectant voyeurs. The spoken text is taken from the Book of Daniel (Old Testament).The slides are enlarged reproductions of Lotharius's crystal (IXth century) illustrating Suzannah's life.

Narcissus Poeticus

Cécile Ravel

Anne-Laure Baudouin, Jean-Christophe Besson

The legend of Narcissus (from Ovid's Metamorphosis): Narcissus is in love with his own image and ignores the nymph Echo, in love with him. The device (2 separated super 8 projectors) shows the lack of communication between the two characters: Echo is projected onto the left screen, Narcissus onto the right screen. Motions, acts and locations repeat themselves, various moments cross each other whereas the characters never reach each other. The grain of the super 8 emulsion is re-filmed, re-framed and re-shot at various speeds (stop motion, frozen frame) in order to suggest the metarmophosis of Echo into a rock.

Méduse / Frémissements d'Eclats

Cécile Ravel

Essma Debouci, Dominique Martin

A film based on Jean-Marc Manteau's electronic creation Frémissements d'éclats (Rustling and cracking). Jean-Marc Manteau worked on the sounds made by wood when split and cut down. I wanted the sound emited by the tree during its existence to echo Medusa's life and death. The projection apparatus multiplies the representations of the Gorgon in order to make it difficult to gaze at her face. Real shots and drawings intermingle during the projection. The treatment of the myth is partly based on Medusa by Jean Clair in which the Gorgon is a terrifying impersonation of woman's sexual power. The Greek myth officially confirms the male deities' supremacy through the beheading of the female character by Perseus. Through the myth, the film tries to show the mechanism of man's violence against any kind of female power.

Dérives

Cécile Ravel

Currents carry away the memories and portraits of my family that history has tossed from one shore of the Mediterranean sea to the other. The wish to remember dialogues with the will to forge, in a pendular movement between moving memory and frozen remembrances, unstable geographies and petrified portraits.

L'eau, l'air et les songes

Cécile Ravel

Maria Trutin, Margot Trutin

The film starts with small electroacoustic shapes created by JMM, exploring the substance of breath, that of water as well as that of the act of walking. From then on, five small filmic shapes keep exploring these same elements surrounding my daughters as they stroll along the sea shore. Dreams spring from the impression of their bodies and faces, moving figures suspended between the sky and the sea.The image becomes a flaky substance which desintegrates into the grain of the super 8 film, into the texture of the scarves, of the waves of hair and of the clouds. The successive sound screenings turn regular breathing and the flow of water into a compact and harsh body of sounds, or into a crystal-clear whistling, stretching it nearly to its cracking point. This work is a prelude to an installation based on identical acoustic and visual pieces . This installation would be transformed according to the places where it would be exhibited.

Carnet de notes 2006-2007

Cécile Ravel

Maria Trutin, Margot Trutin

Le Jardin de Jessé

Cécile Ravel

A concert of sounds and voices accompanying a multiscreen projection that recreates the progress of a collective memory. The plants and characters appearing on the various screens are those mentioned by the different members of a same family evoking Tunisia and Algeria, their Jesse's Garden. Pictures and sounds are manipulated in order to reproduce the memory process: obsession, reminiscences, transference, fading remembrances, changing impressions, or sudden illumination.