Carte Blanche to Fouad Elkoury part 3: lucien clergue

In parallel with Fouad Elkoury’s solo exhibition, be…longing, Beirut art center has given Carte Blanche to the artist and photographer to propose a screening program on films made by photographers. The program, photographers’ films, will present films by photographers selected by Fouad Elkoury every Wednesday for three weeks. Part 3 will present five films by Lucien clergue.

Dans Arles où sont les alyscamps (documentary, 10’, 1966, black and white) today, the term ‘alyscamps’ is associated with a famous promenade, and Lucien clergue explains its origin to us. He returns to the ruins of this site, previously a Roman necropolis, and puts forward his reflections on sepulchers in Christian culture, also drawing on the more recent municipal cemetery in Arles, and the cemetery of montmajour from the middle ages.

Linares – 17 ans torero (documentary, 13’, 1966, color) a report on a bullfight in Arles, the capital for the career of linarès, a young Spanish bullfighter. He is wounded, but the fight is a triumph. He has qualified.

Delta de sel (documentary, 8’, 1967, black and white) Lucien clergue observes the formation of salt in a crust or in filaments on the surface of the water, and then with his lens, the slightest movements, the slightest stirrings on the Camargue marshes. His sense for plasiticity and his taste for the isolation of things makes us realize that in abstract art, nature has long been master.

Le phare (documentary, 5’, 1967, color) it is by playing with the prisms of light from a lighthouse lens and Beethoven’s Grosse fugue that Lucien clergue chooses to address the subject of his film: the lighthouse, the indispensible guide of sailors.

Le dressage (documentary, 10’, 1971, color) there is a type of dressage in Camargue that has been adapted to wild horses. In effect, the horses are left free in herds and when a saddled horse is needed, one is chosen and attempted to be trained. This endangered form of horse training is long, cruel, and merciless.