Ange Lempaszak

Film

When the Divine Comedy meets reality-TV host Benjamin Castaldi : Jour de chance is the fantasy child of reality TV and Italian tragedy. This hybrid and, by essence, queer film, which borrows its references as much from a culture of movie images as from the punchlines of Secret Story, is an unapologetic experiment that seeks to break the dogmas of representations and narratives in order to extract the nectar of drama. Think reality TV as if it were invented by Fassbinder.

All the evils are behind the door. The final scene of The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, written by Robert Louis Stevenson in 1886, is the result of an anguish buried throughout the construction of the story.

Through its six characters, Jour de chance explores this interstice between classical dramaturgy and the performative potential of the digital image. These inlays in the image, which are part of the narrative process, ask the spectator to let go of a cinematographic "reality". We follow the metamorphosis of these characters through this mix of filmed and digital images. This deliberate alteration of the cinematographic image as a digital image is not designed to sublimate a transcendental state, but on the contrary to underscore the tragedy that is played out, the unspeakable (the Devil) that pushes us into a morbid fascination for these Icarus journeys in prime time. Like Hanns Heinz Ewers' The Student of Prague (1913), Chéri, Marthe, Magnolia, Ruby, Louis and Liam are confronted with their own alienated image, in a losing fight to the death, in a world that oscillates between literature and trash TV. Jour de chance is a reflection on self-realization and the thirst for fame at a time when everyone owns and cultivates their own digital persona. Between TV and reality, this film is both a process of personal transformation and a reflection on the stakes of the representation of relation- ships; it offers a reflection on what glory is today.

Ange Lempaszak

Born in Lille in 1997, into the time of Y2K and reality TV, they live and work in Paris.

With humour and aestheticism, in a past- present-future fantasy, as much individual as collective, their work consists of installations, performances and sculptures as much as films, and seeks to produce alternative environments and new forms of narration.

After a first solo exhibition in 2019, "Sunny Day @ The Pool", Ange set up their studio in the Pointcarré cooperative in Saint-Denis, then left it in 2021 to join Le Fresnoy - Studio National.

In 2023, at the invitation of Romain Guillet, they joined the Confort Mental programming collective, an artist run-space located in the 20th arrondissement of Paris.

Production

Credits