Tic Tac

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, first quarter 2012.

Conceived, drawn and animated live by a team of patients of a psychiatric clinic, this production presents, in the eyes of its author, less interest on the purely cinematographic level than on that of the human experience. It is the disquieting wordless story of a woman and a man living in a strange setting where objects are endowed with a life that they have chosen to recount to us through this theatre of Chinese shadows in cut-out figurines. Their characters will meet a tragic fate since, carried off into the air by balloons, they will finally be devoured by a horrible dragon.

The sound illustration by André Boucourechliev, in the lineage of mixed music, blending musique concrète and instruments, contributes greatly to the fantastic atmosphere of this tale. Beyond the strange bond that forms between the jerky movements of the cardboard characters and the hypnotic theme of the “tic tac”, a certain disquiet takes shape as the dramatic tension of the story gradually sets in.

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.