Ugo Arsac

EN CONTREBAS - Film - 50min - 2019

presented as part of the exhibition Panorama 21

Two men are proceeding through an environment of concrete and steel.
Is there something to be found away from the public gaze, far from the perpetual din of everyday life?
One day, I learnt that a man takes a rope, uncoils it from the top of a bridge, down a stairwell and into a hole. He goes down and up it, down and up it.
Ever since I met him, I have been following him for a long time.
He moves silently through Paris’s dark underground passages.
Tunnels, galleries, sewers.
Drawn by a similar desire to archive and experience depth, we entered the capital’s guts, arteries and abandoned limbs. Exploring the layers of this machine, we discover its internal pulse.
I accompanied him in this Dantesque journey like a discreet Virgil, painting a portrait that reveals the bowels of this metropolis along the way.

Ugo Arsac


Production


Le Fresnoy - Studio national des arts contemporains, Tourcoing

Partner


ZID films

Credits


› Assistant réalisation : Suni Prisco
› Image : Ugo Arsac
› Son : Ugo Arsac
› Montage image : Santi Minasi
› Montage son : Médéric Corroyer
› Mixage : Remi Menicucci
› Étalonnage : Baptiste Évrard, François Engrant
› Animation : Lucas Bardoux
› Bruitage : Benjamin Poilane

Acknowledgments


Julie de Halleux, Lucas Bardoux, César Bardoux, Lucie Baudin, Liyo Gong, Chiara Malta, Valentina Carnelutti, Alice Goudon, Mili Pecherer, Blandine, Paola & Nicolas, François & David, Barbara, Santi, Médéric, Massimiliano, Suni, Aurélie Thuez, Marine Clouet, Alexander Raczka, Hamoun Goumidi, Café Interville, Fernando Colin Roque, Marina Smorodinova, Guangli Liu, Mathilde Cordier, Madeleine Van Doren, Daniel Dobbels, Valérie Delhaye, Luc Aureille, Martin Delzescaux et Félix Colardelle.