AgX is pleased to welcome the French filmmaking collective le Ratoire for a program of films including "Asphalt Splendor", an appoximately 30-minute work-in-progress shot during a recent canoe trip down the Hudson River and wholly processed using locally sourced plant materials.
Le Ratoire is a filmmaking collective composed of Léa Lanoë, Pierre Borel (of Labo L'argent, Marseille, France), Katherine Bauer, Joyce Lainé, and Loïc Verdillon (of Atelier MTK, Grenoble, France). The name “Le Ratoire” refers to the French verb, "rater", meaning “to miss, fail, or flunk” and laboratoire, indicating the handmade, experimental approach taken in the production of each film. Since 2019, they have elaborated a methodology for collective filmmaking wherein each film is defined by a particular set of parameters, being both technical and, especially, situational. Sometimes referring to their practice as “action-filming”, the members of le Ratoire convene to realize all stages of the film without pause: from filming, to processing, printing, and producing the final edit.
Doors open at 7pm, program starts at 7:30, followed by a Q&A
$5-$15 recommended donation
PROGRAM:
Asphalt Splendor (2023), approx 30 mins, 16mm
a work-in-progress – we just got off the river....the film is dripping wet, see a glimpse of what emerged
A performative portrait of "the river that flows both ways," or Mahicannittuk in Machican (aka The Hudson River) from the water and with the plants. We canoed the tidal estuary portion from the Federal Dam in Troy to Worlds End, just north of NYC. For three weeks at the end of the summer of 2023, we collected sounds and images of our encounters with people, animals, vegetation, industries and more as we lived amongst them going along the river. We processed the film during the journey with the "invasive plants" harvested along her islands and shores.
Avalanche (2019), 13 minutes, 16mm, sound
This film was made using a collection of 16mm educational films made in the 1950 and 60s and distributed by the first non-profit in France, La Fédération des Oeuvres Laîques. This archive is now housed by the collective Dodeskaden next to the film lab l'Argent in Marseille. Using this lab for one working week we selected films from this massive archive.
The other defining parameter of this film was to use the projector-as-copier technique while pushing it to its technical limits. We hacked the 16mm projector that we previewed the films with by threading them through in a variety of ways to make our print. In certain moments of copying the film, a technical experiment or would-be "mistake" caused an avalanche of images. Streaking down the screen emerging in and out of focus, stretched and skipping...what stories tumble out of this manipulation documented time?
La Nuit Americaine (2021), 7 min, 16mm double projection, silent
An experimental music, film, and theater festival called Le Tuquet, in Dordogne, located on the shores of the Isle River, inspires Le Ratoir to achieve their first floating adventure: they propose to take the time to test their recent plant-based developer recipe and make a film while drifting toward the festival in a makeshift raft, and to avant-premiere the film upon arrival. This small and slow river slowed down time … the crew found themselves meditating … in a strange isolated voyage bordered by the ruminations of the recent reality of Covid … the importance of waiting but also being ready to react when the moment demands.
Flash Info (2020), 5 minutes, 16mm, silent
After the announcement in France of the enforcement of a second COVID confinement, which was starting within 24 hours, we decided to make a film in just this time. We went out into the city then processed in the same moment while camping out in the lab. The film draws from the street and
the last newspaper print announcements, before all would be closed, and people confined again to their homes for an undetermined amount of time.
Narcissus and The Travel Agency (2022), 17 min, 16mm, sound
In this film we worked with everything through and within; in and from a mirror. Looking at ourselves as reflections of reflection on the mythology of this mineral causing mimesis. Decidedly made in 10 days; 10 being a number of a figure "1" looking into "0", the
endless mirror.
Total runtime: approx. 90 mins.
Members bios of Le Ratoire:
Katherine Bauer manipulates celluloid film and the cinematic apparatus encompassing the practices of moving and still image, installation and live performance. Bauer invokes mythologies and folklore as told through the means of obsolete technologies fusing them with mineral and vegital communications. She is represented by Microscope Gallery (New York). Her work has been exhibited and screened at; Hybris Festival (Brazil), The Pompidou Center (France), Lausanne Underground Film Festival (Switzerland), Estudio Teorema (Mexico), Shoot the Lobster (Germany); Anthology Film Archives, The Knockdown Center, The Museum of the Moving Image (New York) among others. Bauer received a NYSCA Individual Artist Grant (2023), ESP TV Unit 11 residency (2017), Handmade Film Institute research grant (2016), a Cité Internationale des Arts Paris Residency (2012-13), and a Carla Bruni-Sarkozy Foundation Fellowship (2012-13). She holds a BA in Film Arts from Bard College and a MFA from NYU Steinhardt in Studio Art. She is on the Board of Directors for The Film-Makers Cooperative of New York and a member of the film collectives Optipus (NY), Le Ratoire, and Atelier MTK (France). She also studied herbalism and worked on various medicinal gardens throughout her life. In the Hudson Valley, NY she worked for Good Fight Herb Company, Common Hands Farm, and The Abode. She currently lives and works between New York and France.
Pierre Borel is a saxophonist, composer and filmmaker, working in the field of improvised and experimental music and experimental cinema. From 2006 to 2017 he was residing in Berlin taking part of the high flow of ongoing creativity that is centered there. He has performed in most European countries, Japan, Russia and USA and is a regular playmate of Joel Grip, Hannes Lingens, Sven-Are Johansson, Christian Lillinger, Axel Dörner, Tobias Delius to name a few. He obtained a master degree at the Jazz Institute in Berlin in 2008, and continues questioning sound and composition through his studies in electro-acoustic music in Marseille. Together with Florian Bergmann and Hannes Lingens, he was running the Umlaut Berlin collective that in recent years released a great number of records and organized four festivals of improvised music. He moved to Marseille in 2017, and co-founded LaboLargent, an artists run organization for experimental filmmakers.
Léa Lanoë After studying history of art and literature in Paris (Université Paris-Diderot) and Berlin (TU), Léa Lanoë studied at Ecole National Superieur dʼArt in Bourges, working on sound installations and collages. Between 2013 and 2017, she lived in Berlin, performed in the group Vermulscht, and focused more on experimental filmmaking. In her work, she often collaborates with musicians. In 2017, she takes part in the Master degree of Documentary filmmaking in Lussas, France, where she makes her first documentary film Nul Nʼest Censé, screened in Les États Généraux du film documentaire, Lussas, Le Festival du Court Métrage de Clermont- Ferrand, Festival les inattendus, Lyon, 2019. She now lives in Marseille, where she created with Pierre Borel and other filmmakers LʼArgent, an artists run laboratory for Analog filmmaking, and works more and more with 16mm.
Loïc Verdillon is a musician, performer, and printmaker. Between 2012 and 2019 he composed music for theater pieces by the company “mais ou l’as-tu.” Since 2010, he’s been an active participant of the musical and cinematographic program at Le 102 in Grenoble, France. Currently, his research is focused on sound, its materiality and forms. He built “yotta-phone,” a performance for multiple megaphones, played at different festivals in the summer of 2015. His graphic works focus on the sound shapes of Ernest Chladni in experimental engraving. In 2015, he combined plastic and audio art for the installation of an “attraction park” made up of dissected loudspeakers, working with the primitive elements of copper, paper, and magnets. Since 2016, he has run and worked at Atelier MTK Independent Cinema Laboratory in Grenoble, France. He has presented Expanded Cinema performances and organized 16mm workshops around the world, in such places as Norway, Italy, Switzerland, Germany, France, Czech Republic, Belgium, and Indonesia.
Alongside studies in physics and comparative literature, Joyce Lainé (aka Lucrecia) begins making films through the encounters with people & visions from the NYC film scene (Anthology Film Archives, Microscope Gallery, and Christine Choy). She moves to Grenoble, France and becomes involved in programming at the 102, an alternative venue for experimental film, music and collective organizations. She also joins Atelier MTK and after participating in a research seminar seeking to fabricate the 1903 autochrome color photography process on film, creates a collective performance called "Fecula est-tu là?" (2017) with Clovis Lemaire-Cardoen, Loic Verdillon, and Etienne Caire. Her first personal film made in France was “40 active warheads” (2016), an adaptation of a poem by Daniel Owens, mixing found and personal footage. Recent works include performances with the Un Ensemble, Etienne Caire, Pavel Viry, and the films within the collective called “Le Ratoire." Today she continues to work for Atelier MTK, helping filmmakers and organizing workshops and screenings, in France and abroad.
PLEASE NOTE:
Masks are strongly encouraged at this event to help protect the most vulnerable among our community. If you are hoping to attend but feel that you need a specific accommodation of any sort, please do not hesitate to reach out to hi[at]agxfilm.org.