Pure shape-focused pornography. 'When porn flicks producer and distributor Pascal Robert asked me, after having seen my work, to come up with a serie of X-rated films, I naturally hesitated at first. Simply because I feared clichés, vulgarity and I must admit pornography. Nonetheless, this genre revealed itself to me as a challenge. Any film director would have naturally considered the proposal in a way or another either to reject it, or to simply picture how he would have turned this commercial process into an artistic cinematographic one. I had an experience in filming bodies but not sex ; although, with a challenging intent of revealing the thin line between aestheticism and pornography, I have once directed an isolated sexual act in a quasi-fictional film on narcissism as a part of 'Les Souffrances' trilogy starring Samuel Ganes. Regarding 'Negative Reel' which I have directed according to Pascal Robert's request, I aimed, just like in all my creations, to focus most of all on the aesthetic aspect of the image ; to work with the visual power of the image with no care for any kind of narration. This very narration would instinctively develop itself taking root in the designed orchestration of sound and image. I wanted something very plastic and shape-focused which would hinder the spectator from identifying himself to the performers. In a way, I wanted a pure shape-focused film direction of sexual acts. The negative film Vision 200T by Kodak® seemed to be the ideal tool for this work. I painted the performers' bodies in order to accentuate the outlines of their muscles and daubed their bodies with edible gouache paint to convey the impression that their bodies are changing into a painter's palette. I intentionally replaced direct live sounds by a unique sound take : the sound of water leaking out of a faucet and a gushing out of a shower ; both were enough to wrap up the images in a rather original style.' Louis Dupont
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