Blending documentary images, literary fiction, and poetic visions, the “Le Grand Paris des écrivains” collection gives voice to contemporary writers through images of the city as it exists today. The principle is simple: for each film, a writer takes hold of a building, a neighbourhood, or a major axis of Greater Paris. He or she then writes a text—of any chosen literary genre—connected to the selected space. The camera of filmmaker Stefan Cornic, creator of the series, captures the spirit of the places. In the editing process, correspondences are woven between the story told in voice-over and the filmed landscapes.
Produced by the Pavillon de l’Arsenal and Année Zéro, with the support of the Métropole du Grand Paris and the Caisse des Dépôts, this collection of short films seeks to reveal the metropolitan landscape we traverse on a daily basis. Each film is an invitation to be carried along by a narrative, to immerse oneself in images, to engage one’s memory, and to uncover a personal interpretation of words and spaces shaped by one’s own relationship to place. The films employ a deliberately simple cinematic language: framing is most often fixed, and the few camera movements are limited to slow pans or tracking shots captured from a moving train, barge, or bus. Atmospheric variations and the rhythms of the city pass through the frame; life enters and exits the camera’s field of view.
Now comprising 30 films, “Le Grand Paris des écrivains” brings together an equal number of intimate testimonies that reflect individual trajectories within spaces shared by all. Each film acts as a guide through different periods of the city, whose layers can be read in the landscape itself. These singular voices each express, in their own way, a sense of belonging to Greater Paris in all its diversity, collectively sketching a portrait, a culture, and an identity of a metropolitan territory in transformation.
The exhibition is organised into three screenings, corresponding to three metropolitan fragments. A first group of films highlights landmark buildings, urban markers that punctuate vistas, structure the territory, and accompany us throughout our lives. Another set offers a perception of neighbourhoods as they once were and as they are inhabited today. The final group follows alternative routes along rivers and through trains, guiding us through the diversity of landscapes. Together, the films reveal a metropolitan territory in constant flux, seen through the prism of memories, testimonies, and visions of writers, brought to the screen by Stefan Cornic as he traverses and films Greater Paris by bicycle.
Now comprising 30 films, “Le Grand Paris des écrivains” brings together an equal number of intimate testimonies that reflect individual trajectories within spaces shared by all. Each film acts as a guide through different periods of the city, whose layers can be read in the landscape itself. These singular voices each express, in their own way, a sense of belonging to Greater Paris in all its diversity, collectively sketching a portrait, a culture, and an identity of a metropolitan territory in transformation.
The exhibition is organised into three screenings, corresponding to three metropolitan fragments. A first group of films highlights landmark buildings, urban markers that punctuate vistas, structure the territory, and accompany us throughout our lives. Another set offers a perception of neighbourhoods as they once were and as they are inhabited today. The final group follows alternative routes along rivers and through trains, guiding us through the diversity of landscapes. Together, the films reveal a metropolitan territory in constant flux, seen through the prism of memories, testimonies, and visions of writers, brought to the screen by Stefan Cornic as he traverses and films Greater Paris by bicycle.
