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In 2009, Javier Packer Comyn, the then newly appointed artistic director of Cinéma du réel, had asked two artists to design a map showing the territories covered by the programme: “An invitation to take the byways, the unmarked roads and trace our own cross-cutting path through the films”. We have pursued this idea with the installation in the Agora, celebrating 45 editions of Cinéma du réel at the Centre Pompidou – before this prestigious setting closes down for five years.
Over time, the traditional geography of documentary cinema has exploded: not only in terms of the countries of production but also of the frontiers between genres. The installation will stage excerpts from the Réel’s award-winning films from 1979 until today, illustrating the diversity of forms and practices. By paying tribute to the Bpi and its pioneering role in bringing recognition to documentary film as an art in its own right, we wish to chart the festival’s fidelity to its initial goals that stand as the “bedrock” which the successive teams have built upon: a political openness to the world and the determination to challenge the documentary genre, whilst also remaining receptive to the new forms and emerging artistic practices which have continuously broadened its perimeter.
This exhibition echoes last year’s Matinale session, which explored the creation of the “festival international de films documentaires Cinéma du réel” within the Bpi, organised in partnership with the Laboratoire d’Histoire Permanente du Centre Pompidou imagined by Antoine de Baecque.