Magnum. 10 Sequences

Abbas and Paisà (1946) by Roberto Rossellini

As an adolescent, Abbas saw Roberto Rossellini’s feature film in a film club in Algeria, which at the time was being ravaged by the war of independence. It immediately became one of his favourite films. In the exhibition, he juxtaposes extracts from Paisà (shot in Italy during the last weeks of the Second World War) with his photographic record of the Iranian revolution, as seen from the inside, turning from widespread jubilation in the beginning to doubt as this popular movement was appropriated by the mullahs.

Antoine D’Agata and Empire of the Senses (Ai no Korîda, 1976) by Oshima

Antoine d’Agata wrote a ‘documentary screenplay’ inspired by Oshima’s Empire of the Senses, then shot it during a four-month stay in Japan between September and December 2006. He himself is the principal character. The film, called Aka Ana, lasts around 20 minutes and was shot on digital video. It is a private, autobiographical diary exploring the transgression, joy and violence of his nights in Japan.

Bruce Gilden and American film noir in the 1950s

Bruce Gilden juxtaposes extracts from American film noir movies with his urban portraits taken in New York, which are in keeping with the tradition of street photography. He uses an artifice that distorts perception – the close up – to capture a disquieting world.

Harry Gruyaert and Michelangelo Antonioni

Harry Gruyaert, a leading exponent of colour urban landscape photography, presents, in the form of projections, photographs taken over several decades in different places (Paris, Beijing, Los Angeles, Marrakesh and Benares). The pictures echo extracts from three films by Michelangelo Antonioni: l’Avventura, The Eclipse and The Red Desert. The links between the photographer and the film director are striking: people who have lost their identity, women in desolate places, areas of colour that convey ephemeral sensations.

Gilles Peress Alain Resnais’s book Repérages (1974)

Gilles Peress has created a book of photographic location research in New York and Baghdad for a fictional film yet to be made. The project is a homage to Alain Resnais’s book Repérages (1974), the first book of photographs Gilles Peress saw. Location research implies a screenplay. Half-fictional, half-real, the character he invented, Frankie S., embodies the post-September 11 world, one marked by illusion and sham.

Gueorgui Pinkhassov and Andrei Tarkovski

While he was still living in the USSR, Gueorgui Pinkhassov met Andrei Tarkovsky, who invited him to come and watch the shooting of Stalker and to photograph his father, Arseni Tarkovsky. This encounter with the director enabled Gueorgui Pinkhassov’s photography to flourish. The installation examines the director through the lens of the photographer’s first works.

Mark Power and Camera Buff (1979) by Krzysztof Kieslowski

For Mark Power, photography can be a way of exploring painful memories, such as those relating to his deceased mother and the places of his childhood in Leicester, in the heart of England during the 1970s. He links these to Krzysztof Kieslowski’s film Camera Buff (1979) and the hero’s gradual awakening to the possibilities of film. In the installation, the photographer juxtaposes some of his photographs, whose hazy, almost blurred lines seem to reflect his wavering memory, with his father’s super-8 amateur films.

Alec Soth and Kings of the Road (1975) by Wim Wender

A photographer of modern American life at its most striking but also most vacuous and disturbing, Alec Soth travelled thousands of miles in Texas in search of abandoned cinemas. His unsentimental vision echoes that of Wim Wenders in his 1975 film about a wandering projectionist in the German Federal Republic at a time when cinemas were disappearing one by one.