Synopsis

All takes place in the universe. Way up in the universe. Not all the way up, but still, way up in the universe.

Awakenings. Layers of skin. Layers of rock. Layers on Layers.

Smoke. Steam. Clouds.

A man crosses dry lands. From pasture to the ocean. And beyond. Too.

There are, walls, in the industrial park, they ooze. Sparks spray continuously, fireworks, along the electric cables.

An exploded narration where the images, the sounds, the singing, the breath, construct an epidermic story, more intuitive then guided by scenario.

A post-apocalyptic tale, told by two voices, those of Vincent Tholomé and Maja Jantar,

conjuring up new meanings to the images and sounds.

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Note of intentions - Vincent Tholomé, Maja Jantar et Gaetan Saint-Remy

We are living in times where genres and media are decompartmentalized.

Times of all kinds of cross fertilization between visual art, music, literature.

It can't be pure chance that quite a number of books of poetry are published including a cd, or that many poets perform their poetry on a stage, solo or with a collective, amidst other artists (musicians, dancers, visual artists, etc.).

One could interpret this as a sign of a chaotic times …

or as the sign of great vitality.

The sign that something refuses to disappear.

The language of Cavalcade is intentionally « primitive », it's tone « archaic ».

It refers to an older way of writing, of speaking, sounding, poetry.

As in ancient times, at the beginning of literature, drawings accompany the written, illuminate rather then illustrate the language. These drawings are the true framework of the book. They give it its bonestructure.

From our perspective, this « return to the origin » - or for lack of better words

« reinvention of the origin » - is what, above all has to be preserved in the film to be.

The trick will thus become to insist, in the uttering of words, on the physicality of the body and the voice. To work with the wide spectrum of the voice, breath, scream, song, murmur. To work on silence. To work on the little that says the most. To work on two layers of narration, one made out of words, the other out of images. Though neither one of them is the illustration of the other. Functioning more like an echo of one another. The images showing what the words and the soundtrack omits. The soundtrack and words telling a story the images don't show.

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Cavalcade is a laboratory, a scenario that rewrites itself every day. We would love to continue the journey we began in june 2013, while shooting in Iceland for two weeks, and bring this 40 minute film to it's endmark with a second shoot and the post production process that follows.

We plan on having the film edited and distributed by the beginning of 2015, to play in halls, film festivals, LAB, poetry festivals, performance venues etc...

Cavalcade is a universe that is in continuous motion, and at the core of which all reinvents itself. We now need to advance in this expedition and by means of the second shoot bring this cavalcade to a halt.

Thank you for your help!

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Production Note - Jonas Luyckx (White Market)

Cavalcade perfectly fits into the line of cinematographic thought that we would like to defend, promote and support.

It poses questions that concern themselves with the essence of cinema and of the role of the cinematographer, namely how to film words. How to put text into light and movement, to give it an extra dimension, a second layer of interpretation.

This questioning is at the base of the film.

Here, the cinematographers point of view is nourished by the writers words in a crossover between images, sounds, voices and texts, and on top of that by the intonations, rhythms, variations of intensity in the words, as uniquely performed and interpreted by Vincent Tholomé and Maja Jantar.

The poetry that emanates from these texts is in essence both intimate and universal.

It invites the spectator to engage in introspection, to create his own interpretation based on the world that surrounds him.

The voices that embody the poetry are the carrier, they both prepare the path and guide through the images. It's a guided journey, where our mind is invited to break out, to overflow and to let itself be carried away by sensations, impressions, emotions. Finding the way to film these words is what pushes us today to produce this film.

“To film words” is to give them a new life made out of dialogues, exchanges, encouraging the converging of paths leading to alternative interpretations of the same text.

Gaetan Saint-Remy's view on these texts propels the words beyond their meaning, because he attempts to give them a life of their own. It is in this perspective that his eye, his view, becomes the carrier of a thought process that follows a certain path. This parallel path leads to a cinema that exposes and incites us as an audience, to enter (or not) into dialogue with it. Starting up a conversation between cinematographer and spectator, a conversation that might seem not to be easy to access but is necessary.

In this film, the voice of Vincent Tholomé, with it's rhythms and outbursts, gives support to the images that are born out of variable geometric landscapes always marked by rock and dirt.

Counter point to this is Maja Jantar's voice that holds us like the cradled clouds of these landscapes. These two voices strengthen the stories told by the images and the words. They give support to an exploration of the remains of a lost civilisation, a journey taken on by a sole character, survivor, neither man nor animal.

His face hidden by a mask made out of felted wool, animal skulls, feathers, seaweed, shells... a universe of it's own, continuously transforming with the journey he undertakes. The mask takes on a flight of it's own, material is added with each new scene. The mask itself becomes the character, it mutates, transforms, bleeds out of the landscape into the actor. Transforms the way the actor moves and behaves in the landscape, it imposes estrangement.

A silent narrator, leading us into the footsteps of an imaginary memory.

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This film places itself at cross roads. It enters into resonance with poetry and performance. The meeting between three artists gives birth to a unique piece of work. Our reflections on the production of this film base themselves on these live forces and on the network they generate.

We at White Market strive to establish a connection between the spectator and the production of a film, so that he can take part of the production and of the development of a project and step out of the role of being merely a cinema consumer to become an active factor in it's production.

Our goal is to respect and protect the uniqueness of each production, its subject and what emanates from the film. To guide the creators towards a space of exchange with the spectator.

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Cavalcade, the Team

Gaetan Saint-remy, Reéalisateur et co-scénariste du film

Né à Bruxelles le 30 mai 1979, GAETAN SAINT-REMY est scénariste et réalisateur de films, notamment de plusieurs documentaires (trilogie "Au-delà du miroir occidental", "Entre leurs mains" série de 3x52, ...), clips (pour des performances, des musiciens, plasticiens, ...), des ciné-poèmes et films expérimentaux, des courts métrages de fiction ("Des gens assis, des gens debout" ; "Parking"), etc.

Il dirige depuis dix ans la plate-forme audiovisuelle Sep Stigo Films et a créé avec Jonas Luyckx la structure White Market destinée aux films expérimentaux et de "transmission".

http://www.sepstigofilms.be

http://www.whitemarket.be

Comme auteur, il écrit des narrations graphiques (collectif Synapse), puis des recueils de proses courtes ("Au-delà d’Ici-là", "Les centrales périphériques", deux booklegs parus chez Maelström reEvolution). Chez le même éditeur, son premier roman, "Charly Solo", co-écrit avec Mathieu Pierloot, a remporté le Prix Gros Sel du Public en 2010.

Des textes de Gaetan sont publiés dans différentes revues (À la découpe, Revue Bâtarde du collectif In de keuken, ...). Il participe également à des lectures de poésies et son premier recueil de poésies, "Les mondes de l'instant" paraît en mai 2014 dans la collection CompAct.

Comme musicien il fait partie du collectif d’improvisation Elphémerrances, compose pour des courts métrages de fiction. En 2011, il rejoint également le collectif de performances METAHUB.

Vincent Tholomé, Auteur, co-scénariste, performance vocale

Auteur and performer. 15 books can be attributed to him, the most recent being Cavalcade (Le Clou dans le Fer and Rodrigol, 2012) and VUAZ (Maelström, 2013). His writing, atypically, is a mixture of fiction and poetry, of orality and language research. As a performer, he has been part of various collectives contrived of writers as well as visual artists, video artists, musicians etc. . Currently he can both be seen and heard, solo, or in all kinds of different formations (Notre affaire commune (with the auteur Marc Perrin), the trio WYRD, the Troupe Poétique Nomade, in duo with Maja Jantar or Xavier Dubois) be it in Europe (France, Russia, Germany, Hungary, etc.) or the Americas (USA, Canada).

The Fondation SPES has supported the development of the scenario of Cavalcade by making it the laureat of poetry 2013.

Blog :

http:// http://lacompagniedugrandnord.wordpress.com/

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Maja Jantar, co-scénariste, performance vocale, création sonore, "Mask design"

MAJA JANTAR is a multilingual and polysonic voice artist living in Ghent, Belgium, whose work spans the fields of performance, opera, poetry and visual arts.

A co-founder of the group Krikri http://www.krikri.be, she has been giving individual and collaborative performances throughout Europe and experimenting with poetic sound works since 1995.

Jantar often collaborates with the theatre company Crew (www.crewonline.org), a group operating on the border between art and science, performance and new technology, as well as with artists from different disciplines, theatre, dance, music. She regularly performs with Belgian poet Vincent Tholomé.

Recently, she performed with Vincent Tholomé and Sebastien Dicenaire at the Centre Pompidou in Paris for the Bruits de Bouche Festival. From 2001 to present, Jantar has directed ten operas, including Monteverdi’s classic Incoronatione di Poppea and Sciarrino’s contemporary Infinito Nero.

Some of her visual poetry has appeared in various publications, amongst others Zieteratuur (The Netherlands), and her visual work has been shown in several exhibits, recently an ink-and-paper selection from her “Lilith” series could be seen at Kunsttempel Kassel (Germany) and a CD and art book of her visual and audio work has been published by Hybriden Verlag in Berlin. She’s currently also working on a poetic film evocating the book "Cavalcade" by Vincent Tholomé.

Blog personnel:

http://majajantar.wordpress.com

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Et tout commence ...

CAVALCADE

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