SCREEN: Genesis by Lucien Monot

May 4 – 26, 2020

Lucien Monot

Genesis, 2016, 16 min. 16mm transferred to digital, French, subtitled in English. Image: Lucien Monot, Davide Prudente , Sound: Lucien Monot, Editing: Lucien Monot, With Daniel Richard, Sound mixing: Adrien Kessler

Selected by Elise Lammer

To get away from his daily job, Daniel, 63, has been working as background actor in many different films over the years. The starting point of Genesis stems from Lucien Monot’s desire to explore the world of figuration in cinema. Since the beginning of his career, Monot has worked toward deconstructing the world of cinema, while paying particular attention to what is usually concealed. The figure of the extra helps him bring out the extraordinary in ordinary people. By turning Daniel into the protagonist of his own fiction, Genesis brings to the foreground a character who is usually in the background. In real life, Lucien Monot met Daniel during the preliminary writing phase of the film, and recalls this moment as a fascinating and intriguing encounter with an extravagant figure, who was ready to share anecdotes about his parallel life as a movie extra. Although the director never appears on film, the complicity with his main actor is palpable, further blurring the line between fiction and reality, while questioning the real documentary value of the film.

Shot in 16 mm, using a Bolex camera, with restricted means and a very small team, the film required an important sound work, whereby most of the background noises were sourced and edited after the images were filmed. A gap between sound and image runs intentionally through the whole film, adding to the eerie, timeless atmosphere of Genesis. The Bolex is a tool that allowed the director to detach himself from the “traditional” documentary, contributing to sublimate the characters, while conceptually connecting them to the history of cinema.

Born in 1994 in Lausanne, Switzerland, Lucien Monot studied cinema in Geneva University of Art and Design from 2014 to 2017. Between documentary and fiction, his films are shot with a 16 mm Bolex camera, and draw the portraits of Swiss characters. Monot’s film have been screened and rewarded in several festivals, including Locarno Film Festival (Silver Leopard Award), New York Film Festival or Visions du Réel in Nyon.

Lucien Monot, Genesis, 2016, 16 min. 16mm transferred to digital, French, subtitled in English