Éveil

The text and video excerpt below document the book by Philippe Langlois, Les cloches d’Atlantis, Musique électroacoustique et cinéma, Archéologie et histoire d’un art sonore, éditions mf, Paris, 2012.

Eveil is, in a way, the history of humanity transposed through the dreamlike universe of Peter Foldès, who conceived, directed and drew this original work. In an absurd, formless world in continual mutation, a girl awakens, naked as on the first day. Swept into a frenzied dance, she is finally absorbed by computers and reproduced in thousands of living, identical copies who encounter war, cruelty, death, brutality, old age, physical love, and futility.

In this film, Peter Foldès gives free rein to his creative imagination around the theme of woman that runs through all his work, in a deluge of images in which drawings and live-action footage are mingled, using multiple animation processes – electronic effects, superimpositions, frame-by-frame animation of drawings in perpetual metamorphosis, etc.

Beyond pure aesthetic research, what is explored are the various psychological states of the human beings who make up contemporary society. The music of Luc Perini creates at once an ideal sonic setting that figures these delirious nested worlds, while materialising, through incongruous and thunderous sound effects, the actions of the characters, the movements in the image and the sound effects. For the sequence of the frenzied dance with the machines, Luc Perini called on the talents of the percussionists Jean Pierre Drouet and Ph Beety.

This information notice was co-produced with INA/GRM for the creation of the multimedia fresco – Artsonores – L’aventure électroacoustique, in the category Films produced by the Service de la Recherche de l’ORTF from 1950 to 1975.