Le haricot bleu

In April 2004, the Bassin Houiller Lorrain coal mine ceased all activities leading to the closure of its last well in Moselle, the last French well. This film is the culmination of a poetic expression that explores the limits of perception of reality.

In 2003, during a trip to Japan, I filmed about ten hours of rushes with a Mini DV camcorder, thinking of making a film that I never managed to finish. The work of time opens the mind: I dive back into the images, digitize them and by looking at them I finally find a form, bathed by the writings of Chris Marker and Nicolas Bouvier on Tokyo. “Faces” was born sixteen years later. It is an invitation to immerse yourself in the heart of a city and its inhabitants. A form of audio and visual narrative, punctuated by only three intertitles, takes the viewer into an ecstatic state between dream and reality.

What has happened in my life over the past forty years? Look back at a past in images, confronted with the present. As a journey into the depths of my memory, I try to guide the viewer through the meanders of memory. The dream allows us to find the memory slag. When we evoke the memory, we make a mental journey into the past but also into the future. Memory is a dynamic process that changes information, meaning the memory itself. This film is the result of an inaccurate, piecemeal, disgressive and sincere recollection.

We dive into the past of the memory of an event that continues until today and whose atoms still impress the whole landscape...

A first-year class at the Art School talks about themselves. They talk about their futures, their visions of current events, their loves... The portrait of a certain generation "Z" is unfolding.

Wandering character , in subective camera, a territory where once grown strawberries, the variety "Madame Moutot".

Is time still for contemplation? The geological time is too slow for us to perceive, except some mutations of the landscape caused by men... Film to locate a territory, walk it to understand how time passes. Watch the effects of the weather and immerse yourself in a country almost without men, to better penetrate the image. Slow down the fear of time that passes to let go contemplating its concrete effects on nature.

Four films without a man. The decor is a territory between nature and civilization, a memory of a bygone world where animals address passers-by in chosen terms, where philosophers experiment in their hut, where castles resist invaders and where dark omens lie on the damp soil of the undergrowth.

Like flipped pages, look... The images look at each other... To look is to keep twice... The layered images can be kept… Two paths in a memory, like ants on a tree…

An implacable Genesis closes all horizon: there is no paradise on earth. man must earn his bread by the sweat of his work. History in which we discover that the garden of delights is for ever! At the end, "Die Capelle", Robert Schuman’s canon on the poem by Ludwig Uhland, closes all earthly hope: "Up there we lead to earth those who were rejoicing in the valley, little shepherd, for you too one day will be sung "

How can time travellers influence the course of the world before its collapse? The 19th century, a pivotal period in industrial development, is also that of scientific inventions, literary and artistic creation. These men who have marked their time have recorded their words on the necrophone, a device to record the voice of the dead... Perhaps there are answers to the world’s problems?

A man walks through landscapes to take the measure of a world, a painting...

A way to enter into a form of thought. The future is already realized, but it can still be changed.

The place where the souls of the righteous enjoy eternal bliss. A snapshot on the edge of a stream, like a pause out of time. The trembling film of the water wrinkles and distorts the images reflected in it. A sound of breathing, some insects and birds signal their presence. “It is a green hole where a river sings...”

Metti Franzen was born in 1927 in Rumelange, Grand Duchy of Luxembourg. Former iron miner in the galleries of the Walert mine, he is one of the last witnesses of underground mining work in the Grand Duchy. The Walert Mine ceased operations on 31 December 1963 and was converted into a museum in 1973. Metti Franzen contributed, along with others, to the foundation of what is now the National Museum of Iron Mines. He was then and for more than thirty years an attentive and passionate guide of the MNM.

"From whatever angle we look at it, the present is a dead end. Not the least of its virtues." Adaptation of the book "L'insurrection qui vient" published in 2007 in France. Fourteen years later, this film is a reinterpretation of some sociological analyses that are still relevant. The insurrection being here as a metaphor of questioning in relation to an ultra liberal policy.