From the earliest days of cinema to the present day, the night has never ceased to inspire film-makers. The eight poetic short films, dating from 1902 to 2023, focus on the theme of the night and the imaginary world it conjures up: dreams, the desire to go to the moon, biodiversity, astronomy, but also nightmares and real or imagined death…

Free Entry

PROGRAMME :

Le voyage dans la Lune de Georges Méliès
Fiction – France, 1902 – 10 minutes

Une nuit sur le mont chauve by Alexandre Alexeieff et Claire Parker
Experimental, animation – France, 1933 –  9 minutes

The very eye of night by Maya Deren
Experimental – USA, 1959 – 15 minutes

É-clip-se by Chris Marker
Documentary – France, 1999 – 9 minutes

Intelligence by Jeanne Frenkel, Cosme Castro
Fiction, animation – France, 2023 – 14 minutes

The Terminator by Simon Ellis
Animation – UK, 2023 – 4 minutes

Voir le soleil se lever dans la lune by Charles Nogier
Animation – France, 2024 – 11 minutes

Tournesol by Natalia Chernysheva
Animation, France, Russia, 2023, 4 minutes

The very eye of night de Maya Deren, 1959

Intelligence de Jeanne Frenkel, Cosme Castro, 2023

The Terminator de Simon Ellis, 2023

Voir le soleil se lever dans la lune de Charles Nogier, 2024

More information available in French.

Le Bal des gens bien (The Ball of Decent People), by Damien Laval and Loan Calmon

Duration: 32 min / Language: French
Synopsis: This 32-minute essay documentary offers a series of portraits of residents at the Jeanne Calment nursing home in Arles. Through their stories, the film explores a form of collective memory of the Arles region and attempts to weave together one story—their stories. In the rhythm of daily life, the shadows of Jeanne Calment and Vincent van Gogh appear regularly, creating a dialogue between yesterday’s painted portraits of Arlesians and those who today share their memories.

La Chenille (The Caterpillar), by Léonard Contramestre

Duration: 10–15 min / Language: French
Synopsis: Unpacking the hidden meaning of the “restarting caterpillar” became for me both a sociological and aesthetic quest, a phenomenon rich with threads to follow. The caterpillar is far more than a dance: it is the symbol of a middle class going in circles, clinging to one another at arm’s length, dragging itself forward as members push each other along in mutual dependence.
Why does the caterpillar “restart”? As if trying to set a great machine in motion again—perhaps mocking, with irony, a bygone working-class world built on assembly-line labor?

As artist biopics continue to multiply, it is worth remembering that Van Gogh has inspired a wide range of interpretations since the early days of cinema. Each filmmaker, beyond a purely historical perspective, reinvents Van Gogh in their own way.

This programme traces a series of key moments, featuring works in which the painter becomes less a subject than a visual motif, and where cinema asserts its own language—sometimes to the point of letting Van Gogh dissolve into the image.

Screening excerpts:

• Van Gogh — Alain Resnais, 1948

• Lust for Life — Vincente Minnelli, 1956

• Van Gogh — Kijû Yoshida, 1978

• Dreams (Crows / Yume) — Akira Kurosawa, 1989

• Van Gogh — Maurice Pialat, 1991

Closing with:

• Un Flic — Jean-Pierre Melville, 1972

No booking required
Free admission, subject to availability
Venue: La Chapelle du Méjan
Place Nina Berberova, 13200 Arles

Hervé Gauville is a writer and art critic. Former head of the visual arts section at the newspaper Libération, he also contributed a regular cinema column to Artpress magazine and taught at the Geneva University of Art and Design (course entitled Arts plastiques & cinéma). He has published numerous writings on art as well as several literary works.

At a time when filmed biographies are multiplying—and painters’ biopics in particular—it is worth recalling that one of the most illustrious among them has been the subject of hundreds of essays, both literary and cinematic. Cinema was born five years after the death of Vincent van Gogh. Ever since, documentaries and fiction films have competed in their efforts to recount his life and approach his art.

Viewing Van Gogh through the lens of a camera differs fundamentally from the observation and analysis practiced by the art historian, the critic, or the amateur. It is hardly surprising that there are almost as many Van Goghs as there are filmmakers who have portrayed him. After all, do the painter’s some forty self-portraits not reveal as many different facets of his face? The so-called Self-Portrait at the Easel bears little resemblance to the Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear.

Following the adventures of a life bordering on legend is a way of tracing the shifting discourse surrounding the painter—and, more broadly, art itself.

Rather than compiling an exhaustive list mixing museographic videos and educational documents, a deliberate choice was made to focus on nine films produced over the span of half a century, roughly from the centenary of Van Gogh’s birth to that of his death. What these films share is that they are first and foremost works of cinema. The painter serves as their pretext rather than their goal. In doing so, they prioritize cinematic art before seeking to render justice—if such justice is even required—to their subject, their “motif.”

In return, like a mirror held up to the camera, the Van Gogh figure illuminates cinema in its pursuit of authenticity and, above all, autonomy. What is at stake, then, is creating work with and through the work of a painter—that is, a fellow artist. And in the proliferation of images, Vincent gradually disappears, persisting all the while in his art.

L’attrait de Vincent van Gogh (2018) par Hervé Gauville aux Éditions Yellow Now ISBN 2873404221, 160 pages