Direction workshop with Patric Chiha

Head of workshop: Patric Chiha

"The deepest thing about man is his skin.  Although it's not its subject, this beautiful phrase by Paul Valéry speaks to me of the essence of cinema: we only film surfaces and nothing else.

During the workshop, I'd like to work with the students from ECAL and La Manufacture on a series of screen tests, essays, shots... a bit like what you'd do during a casting. For me, a casting is not a moment of verification or testing, but of research and encounter. What can directors and actors do together? Where does this first meeting lead us? How do we approach and film the other? How can we avoid trapping them in a preconceived image, and instead liberate their multiple identities?

I don't believe in directing actors, except that perhaps, in an encounter, we direct each other. I believe much more in the tools of cinema - the camera, the light, the music... - as an invitation to play, to surprise, to emotion.

Over the five days of the workshop, we'll use a series of improvisations, filmed in natural or artificial light, with or without words, trusting in the mysteries of faces, the pace of bodies and the rhythms of gestures - in everything that may at first seem superficial - and without resorting to scripts, to try to reach emotions."

Patric Chiha, director