On the occasion of the release of his new courtSalt Hillspresented in Ireland at the 11thIndie Cork Film Festivaland most recentlySolar Daysin Switzerland, a review of the career of young filmmaker Alexandre Schild.
Twilight cinema
A dusk cinema. Here in a handful of words how one could define the work ofAlexandre Schild, the young Swiss director who just presented his latest short filmSalt HillsIreland and Switzerland. A twilight that bathes its plans with its shaving lights, which drowns its characters in the melancholy of a past summer (Cyril & Louise) or under the soon threatening skies of a storm that is born (Letters on your behalf). Red, it fires the reeds dancing in the indefatigable mistral camargue inSalt Hills.But above all a dusk that haunts the protagonists of his films. Twilight of a love, of a swing out of childhood, of an already lost carelessness.
But, right, I cried too much! The Dawns are awful.
Every moon is atrocious and every sun is bitter:
Love acre swollen with intoxicating torpor.
O my keel! As soon as I go to the sea!
If I want a water from Europe, it's the flache
Black and cold where about twilight embalmed
A squatting child full of sadness, cowardly
A frail boat like a May butterfly.
I can no longer, bathed in your tongues, O blades,
Remove their wake from the cotton bearers,
Neither cross the pride of flags and flames,
Or swim under the horrible eyes of pontoons.
Of these last three strophes of the poemThe drunken shipIn Arthur Rimbaud, we find the essence of what the images of Alexander Schild's short films express. A skillfully confused mixture between personification and reification, the prosopopea of Rimbaud converses with the plans of Schild, convoking also an imaginary childish (the swing and disguises ofLetters on your behalf, the passage of cigarette inCyril & Louise) masturbated with exaltation and carelessness to make the moment of turning to adulthood more tragic. And of the famous poet some features are still identified in the characters carved in his films, like Robert (notably Maxime Huriguen inLetters on your behalf), tragic Rimbaldian hero waiting in a breath queer the promised return of a past love.
Nostalgic granules
Inframande des souvenirs chez Alexandre Schild finds its entrance door in the convocation of multiple fetishes, always outdated. The use of epistolary exchanges inLetters on your behalfto the dictaphone present inSalt Hills, the elevated object calls for the triggering of the reminiscences, the spleen tempting and gentle of the memory as well as its sharp and painful projections. The fetish removes from the shadows of memory a part of unalterable reality, a spark that we cherish and that we want to revive with a breath, but that never really manages to resume.
These fetishes incarnate up to the granulosity of the images (reminiscences inLetters on your behalf, 16 mm inSalt Hillsor inCyril & Louise, Super 8 in the video dIdiot Fish), which bear in them the germ of this tenacious nostalgia. Fetishes that even mourning, death, separation will not alter. If any of them bring him closer toXavier Dolanin its themes, pictorially one would more like to adolate to the visual work ofBertrand Mandico. Love of film, taste of the old, pallet pastels, and now a link even more maintained in the person of Clara Benador, appearing alongside Lukas Inoesco inIdiot Fish(turned by Alexandre Schild) just as much as inRainer, a Vicious Dog in a Skull Valleyof Mandico.
From Mandico he also borrows his "wild boys" (title of afeature film by MandicoAs well as the book of Burroughs of which he is adapted): these groups of tormented buddies, at the height of their youth but a little too conscious of being there and fearing the fateful moment of the shift – slow, insidious? – towards something else.Cyril Metzger (EventssoonMorsepresented to Gérardmer) will become one of Alexander Schild's recurring "wild boys". The French-Swiss actor brilliantly and energetically embodies the feverish characters of the Swiss director and will return in his next project scheduled for 2024, entitledThe last sun.
Literature cinema
We referred to Rimbaud above, and we could probably have also mentioned a thousand others. Baudelaire and his spleen launching, obviously Kundera and the loves he describes inThe Unbearable Lightness of BeingIn particular, but instead of creating an inventory at the Prévert it would be better to be content to evoke the eminently literary vein of the cinema of Alexander Schild. A vein that feeds all the more the need for fetishes that we sometimes evoked...
Because here words are everywhere... In letters obviously, but also overprinted on the image inCyril & Louise, projected against the very body of the actors in the clipGyropharefor Kacimi, in cardboard opening the short film of a simple definition inSalt Hills.The endophasia induced by these incursions of texts to the image make dialogue the wanderings of the characters and the spectator's own internal anxieties, bring words about the evils.
Salt Hills
We have already been able to mention his last court,Salt Hills. Carcan of barely seven minutes, saving in its midst a precious object, of rare beauty. While the themes already mentioned by Alexander Schild are indeed there, he treaches his native Geneva lands for a Camargue, maritime and marshy universe. Controversy about a short film about mourning, where mountains of salt replace the already dry tears of her two main actresses (Isaline Prévost Radeff andElla Pellegrini).
Alexandre Schild, director
Born in 1999 in Geneva, Alexandre Schild made his debut in the world of cinema by making a first short film in the summer of 2017,Great dreaming. With this first experience, he then gave life to his second court,Idylle Martyre, which was noticed at several festivals and was awarded the second prize to theSchaffhausen Festival.
As a self-taught director, Schild continued her creative career by focusing on making video clips for various artists, before the release ofLetters in your name,his first film produced. Presented in various festivals, the court was also broadcast on Swiss national television (RTS), consolidating Schild's recognition as an emerging filmmaker. These are thenCyril & LouisethenSalt Hillswhich have further strengthened Alexander Schild's promising reputation in the contemporary film landscape.
Some of his achievements are available onhis page Vimeo.
Filmography
Selection of his main achievements:
- 2018 : Great dreaming
- 2019 : Idylle martyre
- 2022 : Cyril & Louise
- 2022 : Letters on your behalf
- 2023 : The salt hills
- 2024 : The Last Sun
Great article. I like the literary angle adopted. Thanks for the discovery.
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