40th EDITION PRE-PROGRAM

Since its creation 40 years ago, Cinéma du Réel has become a major documentary film festival in France. Taking a close look at the diversity of creation, of forms and ideas, the festival now gathers a large, loyal and engaged audience.

> A book and an anniversary programme

This publication – co-edited by Post-Éditions – will gather the views of various filmmakers, artists

and thinkers who confront “what is real?” today: Claire Atherton, Ruth Beckermann, Charles Burnett, Nicole Brenez, Patric Chiha, Pierre Creton, Bruno Dumont, John Gianvito, Nicolas Klotz, Guy Maddin, Pietro Marcello, Valérie Massadian, Roberto Minervini, Luc Moullet, Véréna Paravel & Lucien Castaing-Taylor, Élisabeth Perceval, Nicolás Pereda, Gianfranco Rosi, Ben Russell, Ana Vaz, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Eduardo Williams, etc.

In parallel, some of the authors will be invited to put their contributions into perspective with a film presentation, opening a fascinating dialectic between the history of cinema and contemporary cinema.

> Competitions

4 competitive sections: International Competition // French Competition // International Competition for First Films // International Competition for Short Films. The films in competition will be disclosed in February.

> Retrospective: Ogawa + Ogawa Pro

This retrospective highlights the essential documentaries of Ogawa Shinsuke (1936-1992) and the filmmaking collective Ogawa Pro, founded in the late 1960s. Their work, still insufficiently known in the West, was a formidable force in postwar independent Japanese cinema and their influence is still felt today in Japanese and other Asian documentary filmmaking. The films chronicled major social and political upheavals in Japan in the 1960s and 1970s with remarkable dedication and commitment. The group, which lived communally and worked together for over thirty years, strived for collective decision-making and achieved an unusual level of connection with the people they filmed and with whom they collaborated.

Cinéma du Réel will screen all the films directed and produced by Ogawa Shinsuke in the 1960s and that electrified the student movement in Japan, including Sea of Youth (1966) Forest of Oppression (1977), Report from Haneda (1967), The Battlefront for the Liberation of Japan (1968) and Prehistory of the Partisans (1969, dir. by Tsuchimoto Noriaki).

After the festival, the retrospective will continue at Musée du Jeu de Paume for the month of April.

Curated by Ricardo Matos Cabo, in collaboration with Jeu de Paume.

> In Between: Tacita Dean

This section is devoted to contemporary artists working in film. Following the presentations of Shelly Silver (2015), Akram Zaatari (2016), and Vincent Dieutre (2017), this year’s focus is on the work of British artist Tacita Dean –one of the most singular artists of her generation.

“The films, drawings and other works by Tacita Dean are extremely original. Her recent film portraits express something that neither painting nor photography can capture. They are purely film. And while Dean can appreciate the past, her art avoids any kind of academic approach. The focus of her subtle but ambitious work is the truth of the moment, the film as a medium and the sensibilities of the individual”, Adrian Searle, art critic,The Guardian.

Tacita Dean is a founding member of savefilm.org, the campaign to protect and safeguard photochemical film.

Cinéma du Réel will present The Uncles (2004), Kodak (2006), Craneway Event (2009), Event for a Stage (2015) and previously unseen short films, all presented in 16 mm and 35 mm.

Curated by Rachael Rakes. With the support of Marian Goodman.

> Installation Lyle Ashton Harris : Once (Now) Again

As of March 9, an exhibition devoted to celebrated American multi-disciplinary artist Lyle Ashton Harris will take place in the Forum -1 of the Centre Pompidou.

For more than twenty-five years, Lyle Ashton Harris (born 1965, New York) has cultivated a diverse artistic practice ranging from photographic media, video, installation and performance. His work explores intersections between the personal and the political, examining the impact of ethnicity, gender and desire on the contemporary social and cultural dynamic.

Following its inclusion in the São Paulo and Whitney Biennials, this installation will be showed for the first time in Europe.

> For Another ’68

The purpose of this program is to deconstruct the ’68 mythology and make it resonate elsewhere. This journey will bring us to Mexico, Palestine, the United States, South America, India and Africa. A social uprising always elicits on revolution of artistic forms: we consider ’68 as the generator of the most radical and innovative documentary cinema. Thus, in this program, experimental cinema is melded into “ciné-tracts”, artist films into fiction films, theatrical performances into filmic essays and guerilla-films into film poems.

Curated by Federico Rossin.

> AND ALSO // ParisDOC: festival special events for professionals // Special screenings // Performances, live music // Off-site screenings…