yann beauvais
d'un couvre-feu (2006)
d'un couvre-feu
yann beauvais
2006, color, sound, 9'40


This film is based on several sequences recorded here and there last November, 2005. What was at stake was to redistribute these sequences by reframing while re-shooting them and by editing in such way as to see again or differently those sequences. Rap beats as much as Rio's favella funk, contribute to give another environment to these by affirming the fact that there are sound produced by blacks, as much as sounds made in the suburb and in the favelas. These songs smash through the official voiceover of the news, they permit us to consider other points of view that the rioters had already shown in questioning the white colonizer.

In November, following the electrocution of two teenagers in a power substation, while they tried get away from the cops, riots broke out in many French suburbs. Each of those days, young people of the suburbs occupied a political space, forcing the attention of the media.

People frequently realized that the riots revealed the glaring blindness of French society with respect to the inherent racism of its universalizing thought which disqualifies all differences in favor of an integrationism strongly tinged by colonialism. The blindness of society that the riots revealed, was felt in the laws of the "State of Exception" established by a neo-liberal government which was enough to justify the wave of repression for the majority of the citizens of France. The reinstatement of the law establishing the state of emergency of 1955, underscored the enduring though repressed presenc° of the War in Algeria. One could not have imagined a better means of perpetuating exclusion, except to call upon the special clean-up squad of the Minister of Interior, eager to deploy the tools of its trade.


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