Patrice Kirchhofer

Patrice Kirchhofer

This film is an audio interview of Louis Skorecki, filmmaker and film critic for Cahiers du cinéma, by Patrice Kirchhofer and Gérard Courant. This interview, later put into images by Gérard Courant, is centred around the feature film Eugénie de Franval, based on Sade's novella, which Louis Skorecki shot in 1974 and which was awarded the prize of "la porte entrouverte" at the festival of young cinema in Toulon in 1975 by the jury composed of Marguerite Duras, Shuji Terayama and Dominique Noguez.

I saw people flee in fright before the force of Chromaticité I, during which I remained fastened to my seat, in the clutches of fear. The last image, the screen turns white: I glance at my neighbour, immobilised just as myself. (Bernard Weidmann, Rhizome Hérétique, 1980)

"In this work in progress, which will never be completed, even though he has screened it in public several times, the filmmaker discusses with the writer France Huser the difficulty of filming / women / of letters / and of making a frontal portrait, which will inevitably have to be reworked." - Gisèle Rapp-Meichler

There are also film-shots, like "L'Envers", admirable montage between 1988 and 2005 from the voice of Jean-Luc Godard, Bob Dylan or Marlon Brando. (Nicole Brenez - Portrait Arte - May 2006.)

Rail Ditch and Fence. - Auteuil racetrack, Paris France

No synopsis available yet.

“Breaking in. Patrice Kirchhofer’s Anorexie 4 continues on the path of the narrated narrative (a short story by Chandler) and Décembre 79 on the path of photography. At the end of these two journeys, the film becomes the subject and the trace of the same act of breaking in. In Anorexie 4 the voice shapes the images (the play of chess and of light) and in Décembre 79, shot in the same abandoned mining region, the photos shape the film: chemical deposits, fossils instantaneously striped and imprinted by signs of life and haunted by their ghostly presence. A space of dreary grey, of desolation, which is in a never-ending process of dying because the place, even before being filmed, already went through a vampire-like depletion. In accepting the invitation of these tracking shots of abandoned factories, the spectator is summoned to riverbanks similar to those of Dreyer’s Vampyr and Murnau’s Nosferatu.” Charles TESSON. Festival de Digne. Cahiers du Cinéma n° 314 – Juillet–Août 1980.

Anarchism, Castroism, Maoism, while mingled. But what survives is Nihilism ! Alain Peyrefitte in the National Assembly, May 9, 1968

Second part of the trilogy on language, on the non-representation of man in Paleolithic art.

Found footage, edited from international news footage.

I had the sudden urge to run through the forest while watching ATARAXIE I. Upon returning home, I went straight to my dictionary to look up the meaning of the title: “Tranquility of the soul. For the Stoics, a state of mind that nothing can disrupt: the ideal of the sage.” (Bernard WEIDMANN - RHIZOME HERETIQUE - March 3rd, 1980.)

Digital film

“Breaking in. Patrice Kirchhofer’s Anorexie 4 continues on the path of the narrated narrative (a short story by Chandler) and Décembre 79 on the path of photography. At the end of these two journeys, the film becomes the subject and the trace of the same act of breaking in. In Anorexie 4 the voice shapes the images (the play of chess and of light) and in Décembre 79, shot in the same abandoned mining region, the photos shape the film: chemical deposits, fossils instantaneously striped and imprinted by signs of life and haunted by their ghostly presence. A space of dreary grey, of desolation, which is in a never-ending process of dying because the place, even before being filmed, already went through a vampire-like depletion. In accepting the invitation of these tracking shots of abandoned factories, the spectator is summoned to riverbanks similar to those of Dreyer’s Vampyr and Murnau’s Nosferatu.” Charles TESSON. Festival de Digne. Cahiers du Cinéma n° 314 – Juillet–Août 1980.

To approach a photo printed by Patrice Kirchhofer is frightening. I have long seen in them an agression by negligence. With patience, I found in them the solution that fancy lab prints could not convey. Patrice K manipulates the marks made irrationally, entirely by chance. When being photocopied, an overexposed photo reacts better than a carefully made print. It is this image, the photocopy, that K. used for his film. His films are characterized by accidental marks. And K. knows how to relate to one mark rather than another. (Bernard WEIDMANN - RHIZOME HERETIQUE - March 3rd, 1980.)

Large visual elaborations of Kirchhofer means most simple devices and childish in cinema archeology, Thaumatrope the Praxinoscope, all optical toys. This fundamental investigation of the batch becomes particularly clear in Sensitométrie III (Sensitometry III), where work on the range is very pure because it is accentuated by the open opposition between positive and negative. But the difference is that, where other devices seeking forms of regularity and stability to swallow motionless in the mobile, film Kirchhofer rather explore all possible rhythms, so to enhance the irregularity, difference, discontinuous. The parade always comes up against the still image, continuity serves monumentalize Meanwhile, the optical illusion is stripped and the beauties of the irregular explode. Nicole Brenez - Portrait Arte - May 2006

A test film shot in super 8 mm and 16 mm inflated for copying. A first film "long", made with nothing, "hypnotic", slow and repetitive as it was at the time fascinating and usual to do, as an exercise in style mandatory. A period film.

First part of the trilogy on language, on the birth of writing.

A cinema encyclopedia. Yet another history of film.

First film made outside of pure animation, with all that it is possible to put and omit in a first film essay, which contains authoritatively - and without knowing it at the beginning - images made by others long before and not the least, with trifles that make a whole.

During a vacation, Gilles Deleuze questions the concept of "knowing how to swim" and the relationship with the wave.

Roland Barthes evokes a pastry named Jesuit.

A barbaric feast of "Mad Masters" of our country hardly unexplored, originally on a very repetitive "kraft" music ....

No synopsis available yet.

Second film of the series, from a few images - some photocopied - and a soundtrack full of noise (of war) and fury - the Vietnam War to be precise - guns, aircraft carrier take-offs, noise from napalm bombs, hair-dryers and zippos lighters. The horror ! The horror !

The fist movie of the series "Sensitométrie" is an animated film. Animation techniques offers incredible possibilities of de-structuring an image. Even in classical animated films, there is no pre-existing "real". One must reconstruct something based on the study of forms and movements.