Synopsis
Liam, Paul, Anna and Jo-Anne find themselves alone for the first time in the museum du Louvre.
“This film project is for me the result of something I’ve been working on since 2010. The representation of handicapped people in our society, and more importantly in an open space. This is a real political question in the democrats’s heart. How to represent a hurting body.
The masterpieces in the Louvre must probably give us answers de our questions. Religious paintings and sculpture are overrun by tormented saints and tortured people. To film in our time a visit in the Louvre is to give a historical perspective to those who were for far too long excluded of our society . To live with disability is to be confronted what I call the three sentences.
The first sentence is to be born or to be by an accident of life, handicapped, the second sentence , To be identified by only their handicap is vital for some , especially in the medical world where everything has to enter a box. And finally the third sentence , probably the worst is to not have a social image at all… To be pushed aside when we want to represent the actual world.
For this film I’ve chosen to follow 4 actors of the company Mind the Gap of Badford with whom I’ve already worked with.
These are professional actors who are handicapped and have the power to go far beyond the apparences and assumed a priori.
They invent and create a game, a way of moving that’s their own with an amazing freedom . The dialogs with all the masterpiece of art inside the museum comes from their imagination and their talent. When Anna starts to dance in front of Khorsabad, or when Jo-Anne starts to run like hell in the corridors. The museum becomes a familiar, protecting place. From the clear symbolic when we see the destruction of Daesh. Paul starts a choreography that responds to the ancient canons as if they were still shooting, In the room of ancient greek sculpture. When Liam walks through the great gallery. Under the benevolent looks of Italian portraits. He’s here, like in a home, same as anyone, with no ambiguity.
Those confrontation that might seem provocative, this stand, literally and figuratively are to interpret as a manifest.
The affirmation that people who live with a handicap are actors in our society”
Denis Darzacq
