Delphine Ciampi

An atypical and little-known filmmaker, Yves Ciampi nevertheless left his mark on French cinema. Sébastien Le Pajolec and Pascal-Alex Vincent, university lecturers, along with Delphine Ciampi, musician and daughter of the filmmaker, paint a portrait of him interspersed with excerpts and previously unseen archive footage.

Born in 1932, Keiko Kishi has been one of the first Japanese actresses known worldwide. Her decision to move to France and to marry director Yves Ciampi in 1957 – after he filmed her in Typhoon Over Nagasaki starring Jean Marais and Danielle Darrieux – caused a huge scandal in Japan. Despite this transgression, Keiko Kishi continued acting in her home country with Kon Ichikawa, Yasujiro Ozu, Masaki Kobayashi… building unique bridges between Japanese and European cultures. Free and rebellious, she emancipated herself from the many obstacles she encountered in the film industry, and created her own production company in her early twenties. Let’s look back at the story of a pioneer, an inspiration for many generations.

The film captures four years (late 2019-late 2023) of an unprecedented wave of feminist and antifascist activism, as expressed onto walls through collages sharing the similar graphic style. Political gestures, both individual and collective, these calls to rise up against patriarchy and capitalism, as a response to the silencing of acts of violence, are changing all at one time the public space and subjectivities under our very eyes. Trespassing, taking (back) the streets, making visible what wasn’t, in a society becoming more and more violently polarized. Here and elsewhere, as long as it will take.