Pacific Club
Azedine tells his story. The story of the opening in 1979 of the Pacific Club, a nightclub in the Paris business district of La Défense reserved for immigrants from the suburbs. By painting the portrait of a second-generation North African immigrant, Valentin Noujaïm is creating a portrait of the youth of the 1980s, whose history has been marked by racism, AIDS, and drugs. Noujaïm’s short is a political film in which the relationships of power and domination between populations and social classes are depicted through the question of dreams and escape. The aesthetic of the short film is governed by a strange, nebulous blue atmosphere that serves a precise and incisive discourse that creates a paradoxical aesthetic. The short film Pacific Club (2022) is the result of Valentin Noujaïm’s residency at Artagon Marseille. Pacific Club won the George Prize for best documentary film at the Winterthur International Short Film Festival in 2023.
Text written by Clara Delettre as part of the partnership between the École du Louvre and Lafayette Anticipations – Fonds de dotation Famille Moulin.