Patrice Kirchhofer

I saw people flee in fright before the force of Chromaticité I, during which I remained fastened to my seat, in the clutches of fear. The last image, the screen turns white: I glance at my neighbour, immobilised just as myself. (Bernard Weidmann, Rhizome Hérétique, 1980)

Found footage, edited from international news footage.

The filmmaker intersects the flow of traffic on narrow streets and on the canals of a European city.

A test film shot in super 8 mm and 16 mm inflated for copying. A first film "long", made with nothing, "hypnotic", slow and repetitive as it was at the time fascinating and usual to do, as an exercise in style mandatory. A period film.

First film made outside of pure animation, with all that it is possible to put and omit in a first film essay, which contains authoritatively - and without knowing it at the beginning - images made by others long before and not the least, with trifles that make a whole.

I had the sudden urge to run through the forest while watching ATARAXIE I. Upon returning home, I went straight to my dictionary to look up the meaning of the title: “Tranquility of the soul. For the Stoics, a state of mind that nothing can disrupt: the ideal of the sage.” (Bernard WEIDMANN - RHIZOME HERETIQUE - March 3rd, 1980.)

Anarchism, Castroism, Maoism, while mingled. But what survives is Nihilism ! Alain Peyrefitte in the National Assembly, May 9, 1968

Portrait. She dances in the center of her area. Obscure to the look. She abandons us to her limit. Turn. Count the chips. Conjugate. Turn on yourself, in a blind echo. Cross the already deserted space.

Rail Ditch and Fence. - Auteuil racetrack, Paris France

There are also film-shots, like "L'Envers", admirable montage between 1988 and 2005 from the voice of Jean-Luc Godard, Bob Dylan or Marlon Brando. (Nicole Brenez - Portrait Arte - May 2006.)

“Breaking in. Patrice Kirchhofer’s Anorexie 4 continues on the path of the narrated narrative (a short story by Chandler) and Décembre 79 on the path of photography. At the end of these two journeys, the film becomes the subject and the trace of the same act of breaking in. In Anorexie 4 the voice shapes the images (the play of chess and of light) and in Décembre 79, shot in the same abandoned mining region, the photos shape the film: chemical deposits, fossils instantaneously striped and imprinted by signs of life and haunted by their ghostly presence. A space of dreary grey, of desolation, which is in a never-ending process of dying because the place, even before being filmed, already went through a vampire-like depletion. In accepting the invitation of these tracking shots of abandoned factories, the spectator is summoned to riverbanks similar to those of Dreyer’s Vampyr and Murnau’s Nosferatu.” Charles TESSON. Festival de Digne. Cahiers du Cinéma n° 314 – Juillet–Août 1980.

During a vacation, Gilles Deleuze questions the concept of "knowing how to swim" and the relationship with the wave.

The first part of the Carolyn Carlson cycle. Between her and herself. Three images of the dance are repeated, come up against opacities that do not let themselves be crossed, are lost in transparencies from which there is no reflection. The sound describes their inevitable journey: this motionless movement.

Second film of the series, from a few images - some photocopied - and a soundtrack full of noise (of war) and fury - the Vietnam War to be precise - guns, aircraft carrier take-offs, noise from napalm bombs, hair-dryers and zippos lighters. The horror ! The horror !

Large visual elaborations of Kirchhofer means most simple devices and childish in cinema archeology, Thaumatrope the Praxinoscope, all optical toys. This fundamental investigation of the batch becomes particularly clear in Sensitométrie III (Sensitometry III), where work on the range is very pure because it is accentuated by the open opposition between positive and negative. But the difference is that, where other devices seeking forms of regularity and stability to swallow motionless in the mobile, film Kirchhofer rather explore all possible rhythms, so to enhance the irregularity, difference, discontinuous. The parade always comes up against the still image, continuity serves monumentalize Meanwhile, the optical illusion is stripped and the beauties of the irregular explode. Nicole Brenez - Portrait Arte - May 2006

An experiment transposing a painting by the artist Jacqueline Bosson into film. A particularly delicate exercise which consists of preserving the quality of both the colors and the range of blacks and whites, of directing the gaze to a single part of an ensemble predefined by one of the many factors involved in “making visible”, without turning away from the the fact that one’s attention is liberated from the noises and distractions of the gallery, of the museum, of the world… — different and similar from those the screening room — an inevitability of light.

To approach a photo printed by Patrice Kirchhofer is frightening. I have long seen in them an agression by negligence. With patience, I found in them the solution that fancy lab prints could not convey. Patrice K manipulates the marks made irrationally, entirely by chance. When being photocopied, an overexposed photo reacts better than a carefully made print. It is this image, the photocopy, that K. used for his film. His films are characterized by accidental marks. And K. knows how to relate to one mark rather than another. (Bernard WEIDMANN - RHIZOME HERETIQUE - March 3rd, 1980.)

The fist movie of the series "Sensitométrie" is an animated film. Animation techniques offers incredible possibilities of de-structuring an image. Even in classical animated films, there is no pre-existing "real". One must reconstruct something based on the study of forms and movements.

“Breaking in. Patrice Kirchhofer’s Anorexie 4 continues on the path of the narrated narrative (a short story by Chandler) and Décembre 79 on the path of photography. At the end of these two journeys, the film becomes the subject and the trace of the same act of breaking in. In Anorexie 4 the voice shapes the images (the play of chess and of light) and in Décembre 79, shot in the same abandoned mining region, the photos shape the film: chemical deposits, fossils instantaneously striped and imprinted by signs of life and haunted by their ghostly presence. A space of dreary grey, of desolation, which is in a never-ending process of dying because the place, even before being filmed, already went through a vampire-like depletion. In accepting the invitation of these tracking shots of abandoned factories, the spectator is summoned to riverbanks similar to those of Dreyer’s Vampyr and Murnau’s Nosferatu.” Charles TESSON. Festival de Digne. Cahiers du Cinéma n° 314 – Juillet–Août 1980.

A cinema encyclopedia. Yet another history of film.

A film driven by the musical universe of Patrice Kirchhofer.

First part of the trilogy on language, on the birth of writing.