Christian Lebrat

Directing

Christian Lebrat

Christian Lebrat, born in 1952 in Paris (F), is an internationally acclaimed artist with a career spanning over 30 years. He is a filmmaker, video artist, performance artist and photographer, as well as a publisher, curator and writer. Since 1976 he has created over twenty experimental films, videos, and film performances, along with a formidable body of photographic work. In the last ten years h…

Known For

Portraits / MirrorsPortraits / Mirrors · 1984
Portraits / Mirrors
1984
Movie
A single-screen version of the Portraits / Mirrors multi-projection. Featuring portraits of: Aloual, Gaël Badaud, Raphaël Bassan, Yann Beauvais, Jean-Michel Bouhours, Gérard Courant, Berndt Deprez, Bertrand Gadenne, Mythia Kolésar, Christian Lebrat, Stéphane Marti, Pascal Martin, Michel Nedjar, Dominique Noguez, Vivian Ostrovsky, Bernard Roué, Martine Rousset, Alain Sayag, Unglee, and Catherine Zbinden.
CinématonCinématon · 1978
Cinématon
4.91978
MovieDocumentary
Cinématon is a 156-hour long experimental film by French director Gérard Courant. It was the longest film ever released until 2011. Composed over 36 years from 1978 until 2006, it consists of a series of over 2,821 silent vignettes (cinématons), each 3 minutes and 25 seconds long, of various celebrities, artists, journalists and friends of the director, each doing whatever they want for the allotted time. Subjects of the film include directors Barbet Schroeder, Nagisa Oshima, Volker Schlöndorff, Ken Loach, Benjamin Cuq, Youssef Chahine, Wim Wenders, Joseph Losey, Jean-Luc Godard, Samuel Fuller and Terry Gilliam, chess grandmaster Joël Lautier, and actors Roberto Benigni, Stéphane Audran, Julie Delpy and Lesley Chatterley. Gilliam is featured eating a 100-franc note, while Fuller smokes a cigar. Courant's favourite subject was a 7-month-old baby. The film was screened in its then-entirety in Avignon in November 2009 and was screened in Redondo Beach, CA on April 9, 2010.
Organisation IOrganisation I · 1978
Organisation I
1978
Movie
First works with pure color. The slits are organized into vertical Yellow-Red-Blue strips which move laterally across the screen according to a pre-calculated order.
Vernazza-ÉtudesVernazza-Études · 1981
Vernazza-Études
1981
Movie
Self-portrait with the DeviceSelf-portrait with the Device · 1982
Self-portrait with the Device
1982
Movie
"In the 1990 text on his film Autoportrait au dispositif (1981), Lebrat wrote that all his films are in fact self-portraits, including those that are abstract colour films, and the Rothko's painting are the most beautiful examples of self-portraiture in twentieth century art. lebrat notes that the impetus behind self-portraiture comes out of his desire to create another image of his body, which does not necessarily have to be its representation but can suggest another satte of being, for example the infinite and transcendent state aims at overcoming the problem of corps morcelé and mortal flesh." Izabella Pruska-Oldenhof
TramaTrama · 1980
Trama
1980
Movie
"In Trama, Lebrat divides a surface vertically to be filmed in six equal segments of color (yellow, red, blue, green, violet, orange). The composition stays exactly the same all the way through the film. The filmmaker puts a band on the side of every two or three frames. Constructed step-by-step, using ten bands, the optical mixture of color induces strange pulsating effects." Raphaël Bassan
VibrationsVibrations · 2014
Vibrations
2014
Movie
9 key moving image works created by filmmaker Christian Lebrat over a ten-year period (1976-1985). Each film focus on an aspect of his experimentation with the use of color in cinema.
HolonHolon · 1982
Holon
1982
Movie
"Christian Lebrat said he thought of Monet, who painted with the series Water Lilies colors ‘at the edge of the visible;’ those of Holon indeed display colors so intense, so enraged with energy that they release in a pure way the performative, exclamative character, the character of act which, in a more or less underground way, informs every image." Nicole Brenez

Filmography

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CinématonCinématon · 1978
Cinématon
4.91978
MovieDocumentary
Cinématon is a 156-hour long experimental film by French director Gérard Courant. It was the longest film ever released until 2011. Composed over 36 years from 1978 until 2006, it consists of a series of over 2,821 silent vignettes (cinématons), each 3 minutes and 25 seconds long, of various celebrities, artists, journalists and friends of the director, each doing whatever they want for the allotted time. Subjects of the film include directors Barbet Schroeder, Nagisa Oshima, Volker Schlöndorff, Ken Loach, Benjamin Cuq, Youssef Chahine, Wim Wenders, Joseph Losey, Jean-Luc Godard, Samuel Fuller and Terry Gilliam, chess grandmaster Joël Lautier, and actors Roberto Benigni, Stéphane Audran, Julie Delpy and Lesley Chatterley. Gilliam is featured eating a 100-franc note, while Fuller smokes a cigar. Courant's favourite subject was a 7-month-old baby. The film was screened in its then-entirety in Avignon in November 2009 and was screened in Redondo Beach, CA on April 9, 2010.

N°150

Le Moteur de l'Action (A.M.D)Le Moteur de l'Action (A.M.D) · 1985
Le Moteur de l'Action (A.M.D)
1985
Movie
"I found that soundtrack abandonned on a shelf in an editing room. It had been hanging about there for a few weeks before I decided to listen to it. There you are, carefully cellotaped in the correct order of the editing rushes, claps, cuts and wrong frames of a film I don’t know anything about. That soudtrack immediatly appealed to me. Its discontinuary and fragmentary aspect, nevertheles made sense, was a sort of transcription in the world of sounds of what had been so for visual in my other films. Moreover, its contents made of sentences or scenes only just introduced or repeated, of questions about identity and the body, the coming in and out of the characters, scenes of seduction and violence, all that mixture permanently interrupted by the unknown director that give his orders : "Ready ! Motor ! Action !" in short, all this gave the film a mysterious and imaginary atmosphere." Christian Lebrat (Dedicated to Marcel Duchamp)

Director