An Interlude of French Planners and a few Very Loud Italians.
Etudes sur Paris
un 1928 film de Andre Sauvage
The eleventh week brought guests. Professor Jennifer Buyck assembled a team of 15 french graduate students from the Planning department of the Université Gustave Eiffel as well as a few cohorts: Profesor Nicolas Tixier from Ecole Nationale Supérieure d’Architecture de Grenoble and from the National Music Conservatory in Turin, Italy, Giuseppe Gavazza.
The week’s itinerary began Monday with all participants coming together to watch Andre Sauvage’s Etudes sur Paris. Originally silent, we enjoyed an accompanying composition, performed live, by three of Giuseppe Gavazza’s graduate students. Following the film, Nicolas helped frame four lines of research from the film (along with Andre Sauvage’s unlucky history) and noted three learning objectives for the week-long workshop.
Lines of Research:
A cinematographic study
–Filming the city, filming mobilities
A theoretical proposal
–Social ecologies/ecologies of flows
A methodological application
–collecting and crossing
A historical perspective –a film of yesterday, to think today and tomorrow?
Educational Objectives:
The ordinary urban, as a motive
The filmic capture and the crossing, as an approach
The sharing around representation, as an objective
Parallelling Andre’s approach to documenting Paris, four transects were identified and split among the student teams:
–Est-Ouest, de la porte Maillot au château de Vincennes.
–Nord-Sud, de la porte de la Chapelle à la porte d’Orléans.
–Rocade Sud-Est, de la place Denfert Rochereau à la place Félix Eboué.
–De la Porte de bagnolet au métro bonne nouvelle.
No time was wasted, as groups of 4 students (combinations of french and US) used the remainder of the day to begin filming their segment of a transect. Tuesday and Wednesday were packed with reviewing, editing, and sometimes re-filming of segments. By Thursday morning all rough video materials had been submitted… leaving the heaving lifting to Giuseppe’s Amazing Sound team (Simone Franco, Luca Perona, Lorenzo Venturino) and a few students who braved the responsibility of compiling all the scenes.
By Friday afternoon, a full-length rough cut of the film was ready to be viewed. All participants along with colleagues ( including Chiara Molinar, from the Agence de la Mobilité – Ville de Paris ) gathered to view the film and discuss thoughts and proposals.
