Nicolas Rey

Experimental filmmaker Pip Chodorov traces the course of experimental film in America, taking the very personal point of view of someone who grew up as part of the experimental film community.

Portrait of experimental filmmaker Nicolas Rey.

A lady unwittingly seeks shelter in a bar, where she attracts the unwelcome attentions of one of the customers.

Nine short, individually titled reels of colour 16mm film, which are presented in a random order determined before each screening. Drawing on a text by German philosopher Günther Anders, the film is an imaginary documentary about Molussia, a fictional totalitarian country that Anders invented to represent the dystopia of fascism.

The subject doesn't matter. Grab moments of reality, following your desires, without first judging the coherence of the whole. Wander. Trust the pictures - and the sounds. Slowly, confront the first pieces and discover what your desires meant. Put aside certain shots that don't fit. Shoot more; complete the composition, trying not to reduce it to a story. Reconsider the elements you left aside. Keep going. The «really upside-down world» stands behind our eyes. Each of us is a social body.

Rey's first feature film begins as a stylish quasi-verité documentary about everyday life in a modest French ski resort. Gradually the film's attention shifts and discovers the dominant presence of the aluminum industry in the area steadily reshaping the region and threatening the resort itself. Shot on grainy 16mm treated with extreme photochemical techniques, the fable about industry and capitalism is an exploration of landscape as a hidden set of signifiers of power. - Harvard Film Archive

Rey's first feature film begins as a stylish quasi-verité documentary about everyday life in a modest French ski resort. Gradually the film's attention shifts and discovers the dominant presence of the aluminum industry in the area steadily reshaping the region and threatening the resort itself. Shot on grainy 16mm treated with extreme photochemical techniques, the fable about industry and capitalism is an exploration of landscape as a hidden set of signifiers of power. - Harvard Film Archive

Soviets Plus Electricity is a cinematic journey through Russia to Magadan, a city famous in Soviet times for being synonymous with deportation. Based on excerpts from his acoustic diary, documentary footage and some autobiographical insights given on the way, the roving reporter searches for imaginary roots and its historical and political implications. The film was shot in August and September 1999 - Los Angeles Filmforum

Soviets Plus Electricity is a cinematic journey through Russia to Magadan, a city famous in Soviet times for being synonymous with deportation. Based on excerpts from his acoustic diary, documentary footage and some autobiographical insights given on the way, the roving reporter searches for imaginary roots and its historical and political implications. The film was shot in August and September 1999 - Los Angeles Filmforum

Tired of life, Martin returns to live with his romantic father and idealist little brother Gabriel.Martin will try hard to warn Gabriel about falling in love until Mathilde - a gambler - enter the picture...

Terminus for you, by Nicolas Rey, takes us on a strange journey. That of passengers in the Paris metro. they use a moving railway which takes them from one platform to another, from one line to another and from one destination to the next. What do we actually see ? The thick grain of the black and white film composes very pictorial images. Geometric shapes come and go. The faces of people come into view and then flit away. Glimpses of words, titles torn from posters, are interspersed between these fleeting encounters. The filmmaker ingeniously presents people according to affinities: mocking young girls in a hurry, tired old couples… This is a real comédie humaine presented to us — in a few fragments and a small number of shots. Then, a few minutes from the end, the cinematic process reaches the outermost limit and the images disintegrate. The film itself seems to decompose and the faces only leave their final impression on the canvas.