L'Italie

“L’Italie” (2012) is a short fiction film by Arnold Pasquier. It was shot in the 13th district of Paris  

“Paolo wants to go to Italy to get over his heartache. Arthur proposes to him a surprising shortcut: do all roads lead to Rome ? “.  

Taken from Arnold Pasquier’s conference, “Ce que l’architecture me fait”,  presented to the Paris-Belleville school of architecture on Thursday, March 28th, 2019 :  

“One night in February 2008, as I left a restaurant in the rue Nationale,  Paris, our car drove up the rue des Terres au Curé and I spotted the silhouette of a building with a pleated façade. I cried out as its porches brought to mind Oscar Niemeyer’s architecture. Intrigued, a few days later I undertook a visit that began in the ZAC Masséna, with the aim of reaching the district of Les Olympiades. I discovered the recent Paris/Val de Seine school of architecture, other new buildings, and the district alongside the old “Petite Ceinture” railway track. I found the building I had glimpsed. It was an office of the Ministry of Education built by Jacques de Brauer in 1971. I pursued my path, cutting across the bucolic passageways of the rue Nationale and reached the esplanade of Les Olympiades. I wandered round this district with its voluntarist architecture, its locked-off stairways, and its abandoned street furniture, as though all this formed a contemporary relic within the city. The film’s story was thus inspired by this walk. I was struck by the appearance of buildings featuring a style that was rare in the capital. I loved this landscape, its mixes, its clashes, its lack of qualities at times. I found a stage there, which made me think of both Brazil and Italy through a play of formal correspondences and poetic analogies. I translated these encounters into a sequence of events that kept this principle of discovery. “L’Italie” was shot solely in the street. The crossing through of the different districts along the way contributes to the dramatic progression of the film. The ZAC Masséna is a mineral world of brand new buildings where there’s not a soul in sight. The area surrounding the “Petite Ceinture” features a landscape between two worlds, in the process of reclassification due to the installation of the tram. The rue Régnault, more Parisian, is in opposition to the passage Bourgoin that offers the contrast of its working-class homes. The fiction ends on the esplanade of Les Olympiades.”