ABOUT THE FILM "SILENCE"

"The word prevents silence from speaking"  Ionesco

SILENCE! As one would say in the corridors of a hospital or on a film set just before shooting a scene.

SILENCE is the third and final installment of the "S" trilogy, which I have been producing from the very beginning: after Salauds de pauvres and Salope, je t'aime, due for theatrical release this year, this third opus concludes an ambitious artistic cycle around powerful human themes.

As with the two previous films, I wanted to offer this new theme to nine authors and directors in order to explore different approaches to the silence that resides within us. SILENCE is composed of nine ten-minute films, nine perspectives, nine ways of inhabiting silence.

Already in Salauds de pauvres, destitution could lead to muteness. Just as in Salope, je t'aime, the silence of women could be a force. This common thread runs through the triptych and finds its natural conclusion in SILENCE.

Cinema has always had an affinity with silence. This art form, born mute before becoming talkative, is along with music, the only one capable of making silence heard and represented.

I wanted a film in which the word "SILENCE" would be summoned to disturb the visible and give birth to stories with multiple facets. Stories that speak, of course, but where this so complicated theme would be invited in as an emotional value. A sound cinema that would give voice to silence.

The range of silences is vast: the silence of nature and animals, that of the deaf, that of the first snow, that of Carthusian monks and churches, the mysterious silence of angels, that of museums, that of police stations where the suspect keeps silent, that of fear where "Shh" imposes itself so as not to be caught in a trap, that of the annihilation of the planet and the silence of debris.

We must listen to what we hear when nothing makes itself heard!

What if the poster resembled the god Harpocrates among the Greeks, depicted with a finger on his lips, as if ordering silence. "Be quiet so that I may hear you!!!" he seemed to say.

In literature, love is linked to silence. "I kissed her; from that moment on we never spoke again," writes Camus in L'Étranger. The silence that imposes itself on a couple runs through Simenon's novel Le Chat. And Hemingway concludes: "It takes two years to learn to speak, a whole lifetime to learn to be silent."

Compared to the first two installments of the triptych, SILENCE will retain narrative importance, but it will be accompanied by singular audiovisual treatments. Some films will be sound, others perhaps silent, as in the era of pioneer cinema. The opposition of sounds and then nothing… a creak, a wind, a distant plane…

Silence can be loud and sound can be silent. Silence imposed as a destabilisation, as something difficult to discern. Silence can cause anxiety. In an isolated, noiseless alleyway, one speaks aloud to break the silence. A physical void can be frightening. Even breathing stops.

There will be disturbing, dramatic, comic, absurd, offbeat stories in this anthology film. Story proposals like music, since the SILENCE sign exists in a musical score.

Yes, the range is important!

KEEPING SILENCE: a secret.

THE LAW OF SILENCE: among the mafia.

PROFESSIONAL SILENCE: that of doctors, priests, lawyers.

At a time when noise invades every space and permanent over-mediatisation pours out its flood of words, the theme of silence allows us to take side roads and offer audiences a reflection on language, sound and noise.

Forward! SILENCE! Before saying ACTION!

THERE IS THE ONE THAT IS IMPOSED

THERE IS THE ONE WE IMPOSE ON OURSELVES

THERE IS THE ONE THAT IMPOSES ITSELF

In a word: SILENCE