What if we let ourselves be guided by the light of a projector alone?

For this exceptional screening, the passionate (and captivating) filmmaker Antonin Peretjatko opens the doors to his personal collection to share, in 16mm, the films that inhabit him, inspire him, or simply move him deeply.

Nothing is announced in advance: no titles, no programme – only the promise of a celluloid journey in which each newly revealed reel becomes an event in itself. Between forgotten rarities, bursts of experimentation, poetic curiosities, and flashes of humour, the screening unfolds along the length of the film strip, like an intimate conversation between the artist and the audience. An invitation to reconnect with pure surprise – the kind that makes cinephiles’ hearts race when the lights go down and the film, at last, is invented before our eyes.

© Lucie Borleteau

Celluloid Mystery & Surprise Film Reel

“Filming on celluloid is always a surprise. 16mm has this magical ability to film almost anything: even when it’s ugly, it’s beautiful. Developing the images is always a kind of birth.

The magic of celluloid lies in being able to look at the image by holding it up to the sky, like a crystal. The image of a projected film is not reconstructed; it is simply enlarged.

For the screening we chose to call Celluloid Mystery, I selected a few rarities – prints with forgotten colours, period documents, improbable images that allow us to glimpse the treasures preserved by 16mm.

The films have survived multiple screenings and conservation issues; each print has its own story: one stripped of its opening credits for reasons of censorship, another found in a rubbish bin… The epigraph of Jean-Luc Godard’s Weekend has never been truer: “a film found in the scrap heap.”

I have always loved short films (less than 120 metres – a small film, about 11 minutes), and 16mm allows us to dive back into rare and forgotten pre-feature films, or early works by beginners who later became masters. Discovering unsuspected images creates a true addiction to this format.

With all these treasures that are little or not at all visible online or on DVD… 16mm has not yet revealed all its mysteries.”

Antonin PERETJATKO

Info

La Jetée – salle de projection
6 place Michel-de-L’Hospital
63000 Clermont-Ferrand

Friday 6 February at 20:00 (single screening)

The screening and the talk will be in French.