About
Early one morning, a magnificent eagle emerges slowly from a forest, strangely moon-like in appearance. The proud winged creature soars upwards, discovering on the way the architectural structure that is the Bibliotheque Nationale Française. At the same moment, two men emerge as if from the building's underbelly, on a moving escalator. Resembling two film noir figures from the avant garde of the sixties. Incarnating true outsiders. Their friendship bound by some mysterious past. Both have code names: Costello and the Colonel. Strolling around the esplanade of the BNF, they engage in an intense conversation, commenting on the architectural landscape surrounding them. A singular form of urban psychogeography of which behind lies an imminent illicit act. Crossing over the esplanade made up of long avenues outlining superlative perspectives surrounding the four glass towers of the BNF, Costello and the Colonel bring to life two characters from the past, caught up in a post modernist landscape. Their solitude creating a tension as they slowly become aware that they are under invisible surveillance. Was the encounter orchestrated from the beginning, underlining a fatal trap. Costello and the Colonel, like two pawns on a chessboard, are in fact caught up in a deadly game beyond their control of which the final dramatic conclusion in this so called theatre of shadows, leaves only the blue sky, suggesting that the encounter and its eventual violent conclusion could only be deemed as an urban incident
Film : 35mm, colour, sound, 24 minutes
Writer and Director-Producer: John Lalor
Actors : André S Labarthe and Jean-François Stévenin
Director of Photography : Eric Gautier
Editor : Guy Lecorne
Sound Design : Nicolas Becker
Script advisor : Mathias Sanderson
Original music : Chris White
Assistant Director : Jean-Michel Donohue
Associate Producer : Corinne Castel
Production : John Lalor and Mobiles, supported by the Irish Arts Council
John Lalor
Irish artist, born in Dublin in 1961. He has lived in Paris for the last twenty years. His work comprises paintings in multiples entitled the democratic paintings series. He builds scaled models and publishes texts which are also incorporated into his exhibitions. He came to live in France at the beginning of the second mandate of François Mitterrand, wanting to break with the anglo-saxon cultural devide, which had become with time, a massive cultural highway, purely functional in status. Paris for him was a place to stay and learn. Joyce, Beckett, Baudrillard, Godard, Buren⦠One long residence, an intense laboratory of artistic research. His latest art work is a text piece based on the director Jean-Luc Godard, entitled 'Stereo JLG/the editing of the trailer'. A three thousand word text without punctuation, published weekly in the broadsheet The Irish Times in early 2010. The seventh episode appearing in Dublin's Oonagh Young gallery in order to conclude the event. His work has a direct rapport with cinema. His new film project Urban Incident, his first with actors and dialogues, will try to affirm his intentions as a visual artist combining as a body cinema and art.
