La Cinémécanique

BAR-Q-UES, La Cinémécanique’s first production, is a kind of live animation inspired by the maritime world of the dark, melancholy graphic novel La Digue, by Vincent Fortemps.

La Cinémécanique was invented by Fortemps and Christian Bubet for the performance of Chantier Musil by the choreographer François Verret. It allows the creation of moving images in real time by means of processes which connect drawing, light, and video capture. The result of this “mechanical cinema” is an image which is crafted in real time as the audience looks on. Playing with speed and light, fragmenting the image, Dubet and Gaétan Besnard animate Fortemps’ drawings, some created live and some pre-drawn and inserted alongside into the animation. Accompanying this self-creating work is Alain Mahé’s soundtrack, an arrangement of sounds recorded in harbours, music taken from improvisations by Jean-François Pauvros and Carlos Zingaro, and even noises recorded at Fortemps’ desk. Before our very eyes, a fragmented, fragile, original animation is created from mental landscapes and atmospheric reveries.