Lionel Soukaz

The “Journal Annales” consists of almost 2.000 hours of video footage collected by filmmaker Lionel Soukaz since 1991. For “Carottage”, the idea was to take a random sample from this vast volume, like a geological core sample. The result is a condensed history of political struggles and radical cultural experimentation spanning two decades.

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.

A contemporary scenario, in which American journalist Doug Ireland visits Europe and meets an oppressed young Arab man, is played against the celebrated story of Emperor Hadrian’s relationship with his favourite Antinous.

“Ixe (written X and pronounced EEKS – as it is pronounced in French –, like a scream, a wound) is an imploded, crucified film. Made to be projected on four screens at once, X is drawn and quartered. At the four points of the compass, at the four ends of the cross, War, Sex, Religion and Drugs, the double exposures, the colliding glimpses the eye barely recognizes, the skilful repetitions of themes, remind us that Sex is also the war of bodies, and the pope, the Drug of the people. And the story of this young man, shooting up in order to experience all the horror of the world in front of his TV set, reminds us that the heroin orgy is indeed the subjective locus of the monsters of the modern unconscious.” - Guy Hocquenghem

Lionel Soukaz followed Tom de Pékin in Paris, filming a succession of quick portraits of the graphic designer's entourage in a playful rhythm. music : The Brain, Kerozen voices : Tom de Pékin, Katharina

Othello Vilgard, Xavier Baert and Lionel Soukaz filmed a performance by Tom from Beijing: one strips himself naked while the others veil and reveal the film.

The “Journal Annales” consists of almost 2.000 hours of video footage collected by filmmaker Lionel Soukaz since 1991. For “Carottage”, the idea was to take a random sample from this vast volume, like a geological core sample. The result is a condensed history of political struggles and radical cultural experimentation spanning two decades.

A contemporary scenario, in which American journalist Doug Ireland visits Europe and meets an oppressed young Arab man, is played against the celebrated story of Emperor Hadrian’s relationship with his favourite Antinous.

A contemporary scenario, in which American journalist Doug Ireland visits Europe and meets an oppressed young Arab man, is played against the celebrated story of Emperor Hadrian’s relationship with his favourite Antinous.

“Ixe (written X and pronounced EEKS – as it is pronounced in French –, like a scream, a wound) is an imploded, crucified film. Made to be projected on four screens at once, X is drawn and quartered. At the four points of the compass, at the four ends of the cross, War, Sex, Religion and Drugs, the double exposures, the colliding glimpses the eye barely recognizes, the skilful repetitions of themes, remind us that Sex is also the war of bodies, and the pope, the Drug of the people. And the story of this young man, shooting up in order to experience all the horror of the world in front of his TV set, reminds us that the heroin orgy is indeed the subjective locus of the monsters of the modern unconscious.” - Guy Hocquenghem

“Ixe (written X and pronounced EEKS – as it is pronounced in French –, like a scream, a wound) is an imploded, crucified film. Made to be projected on four screens at once, X is drawn and quartered. At the four points of the compass, at the four ends of the cross, War, Sex, Religion and Drugs, the double exposures, the colliding glimpses the eye barely recognizes, the skilful repetitions of themes, remind us that Sex is also the war of bodies, and the pope, the Drug of the people. And the story of this young man, shooting up in order to experience all the horror of the world in front of his TV set, reminds us that the heroin orgy is indeed the subjective locus of the monsters of the modern unconscious.” - Guy Hocquenghem

“Ixe (written X and pronounced EEKS – as it is pronounced in French –, like a scream, a wound) is an imploded, crucified film. Made to be projected on four screens at once, X is drawn and quartered. At the four points of the compass, at the four ends of the cross, War, Sex, Religion and Drugs, the double exposures, the colliding glimpses the eye barely recognizes, the skilful repetitions of themes, remind us that Sex is also the war of bodies, and the pope, the Drug of the people. And the story of this young man, shooting up in order to experience all the horror of the world in front of his TV set, reminds us that the heroin orgy is indeed the subjective locus of the monsters of the modern unconscious.” - Guy Hocquenghem

Lionel Soukaz followed Tom de Pékin in Paris, filming a succession of quick portraits of the graphic designer's entourage in a playful rhythm. music : The Brain, Kerozen voices : Tom de Pékin, Katharina

Othello Vilgard, Xavier Baert and Lionel Soukaz filmed a performance by Tom from Beijing: one strips himself naked while the others veil and reveal the film.

Othello Vilgard, Xavier Baert and Lionel Soukaz filmed a performance by Tom from Beijing: one strips himself naked while the others veil and reveal the film.

A fantasia on the inner lives of gay teenagers in '70s France.

A fantasia on the inner lives of gay teenagers in '70s France.

A fantasia on the inner lives of gay teenagers in '70s France.

Auto-portrait.

A short documentary about the October 14 1979 March For Lesbian And Gay Rights in Washington D.C.

You can, in fact, trace my life through my films. The first one was called Paris Chausey -- a love story about an island. I was desperate to find a place where I could breathe, and at the time I was completely under Godard’s influence -- I needed to break free from it. And to escape an influence, it’s important to take it as far as your admiration goes: it’s wonderful to admire a writer or a filmmaker, to watch all their films, to fall asleep with their book, but in the end, it suffocates you. My first film was my way of breaking out of the Nouvelle Vague that had shaped my childhood, when I spent all my nights and days at the Cinémathèque.

Film restored by Yves-Marie Mahé from several recordings made during past screenings, notably in the basement of the L’Etna laboratory. A car journey, then the bedroom. The naked body in bed, sleeping or smiling at the camera, splits in two and overlaps. Accompanied by Christophe’s melancholic pop songs, a raw tenderness emerges.

A film by Lionel Soukaz

"Race d’Ep!" (which literally translates to "Breed of Faggots") was made by the “father of queer theory,” Guy Hocquenghem, in collaboration with radical queer filmmaker and provocateur Lionel Soukaz. The film traces the history of modern homosexuality through the twentieth century, from early sexology and the nudes of Baron von Gloeden to gay liberation and cruising on the streets of Paris. Influenced by the groundbreaking work of Michel Foucault on the history of sexuality and reflecting the revolutionary queer activism of its day, "Race d’Ep!" is a shockingly frank, sex-filled experimental documentary about gay culture emerging from the shadows.

"Race d’Ep!" (which literally translates to "Breed of Faggots") was made by the “father of queer theory,” Guy Hocquenghem, in collaboration with radical queer filmmaker and provocateur Lionel Soukaz. The film traces the history of modern homosexuality through the twentieth century, from early sexology and the nudes of Baron von Gloeden to gay liberation and cruising on the streets of Paris. Influenced by the groundbreaking work of Michel Foucault on the history of sexuality and reflecting the revolutionary queer activism of its day, "Race d’Ep!" is a shockingly frank, sex-filled experimental documentary about gay culture emerging from the shadows.

"Race d’Ep!" (which literally translates to "Breed of Faggots") was made by the “father of queer theory,” Guy Hocquenghem, in collaboration with radical queer filmmaker and provocateur Lionel Soukaz. The film traces the history of modern homosexuality through the twentieth century, from early sexology and the nudes of Baron von Gloeden to gay liberation and cruising on the streets of Paris. Influenced by the groundbreaking work of Michel Foucault on the history of sexuality and reflecting the revolutionary queer activism of its day, "Race d’Ep!" is a shockingly frank, sex-filled experimental documentary about gay culture emerging from the shadows.

A compilation of scenes that were censored and cut from Lionel Soukaz's 1979 film "Race d'Ep!"

An "action" by Michel Journiac, performed at the book fair on March the 16th, 1993, where he exhibited 150 poems marked with his own blood. Michel Journiac had a blood sample taken in public and then spread the blood on three plexiglass plaques on which Fernando Pessoa's words were written : "Outside all this, there is Christ, who knew nothing about finance - and, it seems, didn't have a library". The works were then attached to a background and exhibited before the public.

Dedicated to Nicole Brenez, "La loi X - La nuit en permanence" includes a performative reading by Lionel Soukaz of his article "La Nuit en permanence", published in the french newspaper Libération, in August 9th, 1979.

A trip to Andalusia, filmed from the window of a bus, hand on his companion’s bulge.

An ode to the life, thought and cinema of Pasolini, brought to life in a video overlay and embodied by two young men.

Lionel Soukaz opens a wooden panel to discover the sky and comes across Italian workers singing. He longs for them and, when they leave in the evening, finds himself alone, watching television. This video mirror sends him back to his own time: Nixon, Giscard. So he dances like a cry for help: "Love me!”. The cross-dressing scenes are like a coming out, revealing the feminine side of the filmmaker at just twenty years of age.

"I filmed my boyfriend at the time and tried to strip him, but in fact it's a film about ecology." -Soukaz Soukaz's first film, though lost for many years until it was finally recovered.

Chronicles of a love affair, sunny portraits of a romantic painter, journeys from the countryside to the beaches, bodies and colours dance like a bohemian reverie, back to the news of 11 September 2001.

I find pornographic magic lantern slides when I get home. I put them in front of my TV and record them. Thanks to Agathe Dreyfus.

Daily spleen, drunkenness among friends, conversations and the passage of time: the video diaries composed by Lionel Soukaz chronicle the early 1990s, the comet tail of those never-ending winter years and the nightmare of the AIDS years. But edited thirty years later with Stéphane Gérard, they are also a tribute to Hervé Couergou, the beloved partner at the center of all the filmed scenes. Slowly, in conversations between couples and friends, the dandy spirit and intimate confession overlap. What emerges is a portrait of a way of dealing with the times and their pain, which, beneath the act of commemoration, seeks to inscribe a living presence.

On the soundtrack (in French) of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, the cult horror film featuring a despicable Texan killer, Lionel Soukaz combines images of protests against the war waged by Bush Jr.

The voice-over of “Boyfriend 2”, a manifesto for the liberation of adolescent sexuality, intertwines texts by Pasolini, Soukaz, Duvert, Matzneff, while initiating a unique reflection around the relationships between image and pornography, which will soon face a third term called “censorship”.

No synopsis available yet.

The first three minutes I filmed on the Champs Élysées, at Derek Woolfenden's request, are taken from his film Playdead. Then Bush arrived in Paris and, like all those protesters, I reacted.

No synopsis available yet.

My friend ‘RV’ died on 1 August 1994 at the age of 32. We had known each other for 12 years. I believe that this 28-minute video, started on the morning of his death, is an impulse, the ultimate truth, because it draws from the emotion of life by simply bearing witness to it.

In 1991, Lionel Soukaz initiated his Journal annales, filming his "community of fags, poor people, and drug addicts" confronted with the AIDS epidemic, in 2,000 hours where public events intersect with the intimacy of his daily life. Faced with the impossibility of making a montage that would reflect the richness of this approach, Stéphane Gérard and Lionel Soukaz, for this project, focus on associations, mobilizations, meetings: the collective forms of commitment among the diversity of the fronts of struggle.

While his mother is dying of cancer, Laurent starts a relationship with a handsome stranger who promises to help him with a film carreer.

While his mother is dying of cancer, Laurent starts a relationship with a handsome stranger who promises to help him with a film carreer.

No synopsis available yet.