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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For around ten years, Gisèle Vienne has been weaving stylistic links between puppetry art, choreographic performance, visual arts, scandalous literature (Jean Genet, Catherine Robbe-Grillet, Denis Cooper, etc.) and the underground music scene (Tujiko Noriko, Pita, SunnO, Boris, Corrupted, etc.).

Following her philosophy studies and an apprenticeship as a contemporary puppeteer at the École supérieure nationale des arts de la marionnette in Gent (Belgian Higher School of Puppetry Arts), Gisèle Vienne began making life-size puppets which she (dis) articulates. She brings dance and puppetry together to invite the spectator to understand the aspects of humankind in an atmosphere of beauty which focuses on order, disorder and scenic experimentation.

To complement her performances, the artist now proposes extensions of her scenic work in the form of photos (Black Noise exhibition, paying tribute to Steven Parrino) and installations (during a collective exhibition, in the suite of a Tokyo hotel).

Since Showroomdummies in 2001, in partnership with Etienne Bideau-Rey, her puppets form the axis around which a handful of actors-performers, invested in their whole slow, majestic body dynamics gravitate, against a backdrop of Black Metal lyrics.

Source : programme CCN - Ballet de Lorraine 2012 - 2013

More information : http://www.g-v.fr/fr/

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