They are fifteen young dancers of various origins and horizons. They  are touring Crowd, Gisèle Vienne’s dance piece on the 90’s rave scene.  Following them from theatre to theatre, If It Were Love documents their  work as well as their strange, intimate relationships. For the line  becomes blurry. The stage seems to contaminate real life – unless the  opposite is happening. From a dance documentary, the film thus grows  into a troubling journey into our nights, our parties, our loves.

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Gisèle  Vienne is a Franco-Austrian artist, choreographer, and theatre and film  director. From an early age, she was trained in visual arts by Dorothéa  Vienne-Pollak, and later studied dance, music, philosophy, and  puppeteering.

Over the past twenty years, her work has toured in Europe, Asia, and America, among others the productions Showroomdummies #1, #2, #3, #4 (2001 – 2020), I Apologize (2004), Kindertotenlieder (2007), Jerk (2008), This is how you will disappear (2010), LAST SPRING: A Prequel (2011), The Ventriloquists Convention (2015) in collaboration with Puppentheater Halle, Crowd (2017), L’Étang (2021), and EXTRA LIFE (2023).  In 2021, she directed the film Jerk.

Vienne has frequently exhibited her photographs and installations in museums, among them the Whitney Museum of American Art in  New York, the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the Museo Nacional de Bellas  Artes in Buenos Aires, the Centre d’Art Contemporain in Geneva and Musée  d’Art Moderne de Paris. In 2024/2025 she presents two new exhibitions  for the Contemporary Art Center Haus am Waldsee and the Georg Kolbe  Museum inaugurated as part of Berlin Art Week 2024. 

She published her photography in the books JERK/Through Their Tears with Jonathan Capdevielle, Dennis Cooper,and Peter Rehberg (Paris: Dis Voir, 2011) and 40 PORTRAITS (2003–2008), in collaboration with Dennis Cooper and Pierre Dourthe (Paris: Éditions P.O.L., 2012). A  new book of photographs, designed in collaboration with Estelle Hanania  and Elsa Dorlin, is published by Spector Books in November 24. Her work has led to various publications and the original music of her shows to several albums.  

Source and more information: https://www.g-v.fr/en/gisele-vienne/

Patric Chiha is an Austrian filmmaker of Hungarian and Lebanese origins, born in 1975 in Vienna. After studying fashion styling at ESAA Duperré (Paris) and editing at INSAS (Brussels), he directed several short and medium-length films, and documentaries (including HOME, WHERE IS THE CHEF DE LA PRISON? and LES MESSIEURS) selected in numerous festivals. In 2009, he directed his first feature film, DOMAINE, with Béatrice Dalle, selected at the Venice Film Festival. This was followed by BOYS LIKE US (2014) and the documentaries BROTHERS OF THE NIGHT (2016) and SI C’ÉTAIT DE LAMOUR (2019), both selected at the Berlinale. Currently, he is preparing his next fiction film, THE BEAST IN THE JUNGLE.

Source: NORTE productions