© Chloé Magdelaine

As part of this Dérives talk, Valentin Noujaïm looks back at the driving forces behind his work, both filmic and visual, which examines the power relations issues in French society through the prism of a strong ideal: revolutionary love or the love of revolution.

Valentin Noujaïm's work focuses on three themes: compressed lives, forgotten lives and deformed lives. He gives life to marginal and strange characters in sometimes fantastical worlds, mixing DV, 16mm and digital formats and sometimes using special effects.

With Madeleine Planeix-Crocker, associate curator at Lafayette Anticipations.
Valentin Noujaïm graduated in 2020 from the Fémis film school in the script department.

He directed a first documentary film, Avant qu'elle oublie Héliopolis, as well as an experimental film, L'étoile bleue, supported by the Doha Film Institute and the AFAC and presented at the Visions du Réel international festival in Nyon (2020) in international competition.

His first short fiction film, Les Filles destinées, was supported by the CNC and is currently in distribution. In 2021.22, he is in residence at Artagon in Marseille and is making a new video and installation entitled the Pacific Club, supported by the Doha Film Institute and the Ile-de-France Region.

In 2022.23, he is selected for the Salon de Montrouge in Paris and the Getting Real Biennial in Los Angeles. He is also in residence at the Ateliers Médicis in Paris, at the Villa Médicis in Rome in June, and "Guest student" at the Städelschule for 3 semesters in video and installation with the Irish artist Gérard Byrne.

Madeleine Planeix-Crocker is Associate Curator at Lafayette Anticipations.

 

Madeleine is also co-director of the "Troubles, Alliances et Esthétiques" Chair at the Beaux-Arts de Paris and a permanent member of the Scientific Research Council of the ESAD, Reims.

A graduate of Princeton University in cultural studies, Madeleine earned a Master's degree in Media, Art and Creation from HEC Paris and a Master's degree from the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS). There she led an arts-based research-action project with Women Safe non-profit, where she now facilitates a theater and creative writing workshop. Madeleine is currently a PhD candidate at the EHESS (CRAL), studying practices for commoning in contemporary performance.

She has been practicing dance and theater since childhood.