Jim Jarmusch

It is a particular pleasure to continue the cycle of exhibitions that CINEMA GALERIES has been offering for the past few years to great contemporary filmmakers (Aleksander Sokurov, David Lynch, Tsai Ming-Liang, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, etc.) with this time an exhibition and a complete retrospective dedicated to Jim Jarmusch.

Unlike the filmmakers invited so far, Jim Jarmusch (Dead Man, Stranger Than Paradise, Gosth Dog…) does not make works for galleries. However, his cinema, as we know since the discovery in 1984 of Stranger Than Paradise (a film that became a cult in the moment and is still adored by each new generation), is all imbued with a particular knowledge of other arts, in particular: photography, poetry, music, collage (which he practices), painting. His cinema was born out of the idea of transversality, of exchange between the arts, which the New York No Wave scene (from the Ramones to Jean-Michel Basquiat), in which he took an active part in the late 1970s, claimed. And while Jarmusch does not make art videos or installations, he does make films with shots that critics like to call tableau shots. Because their economy is that of painting: to let a maximum of things be seen in a precise, breathable time, for their taste for the sequence, for their aesthetic fulgurating too. He is one of the great cameramen, one of the great film makers of this century. Above all, he is a filmmaker who is open to the other arts, perhaps because his cinema dreams of itself as a place apart, half wild, half protected, where it could welcome all forms of modernity, rebellion, counter-culture, mix it, foil it, rethink it.

So we wanted to think of this exhibition as an itinerary.

A stroll through his images, his famous “plan-tableaux”: we will circulate freely, as his characters circulate. We will visit the recurrences, the motifs. Above all, we will try to surprise what we think we know about Jarmusch’s cinema with the images of Jarmusch himself. We are convinced that he is an inexhaustible filmmaker – we think we know exactly what his films are like and yet Jarmusch, and yet his films are ones that we can see again with the same innocence. They are reservoirs of secrets, they stay with you for a long time, you recharge your batteries, you go there to breathe the air – it seems to be rarer and stronger than elsewhere. That we live better there.

So perhaps that is the intimate ambition of this exhibition: not to prove that Jarmusch is an artist (his films have proved that without us, and for thirty years). No, simply to live happily while watching Jarmusch work. To live happily by surveying the world as he sees it. With his sense of precision.

However, beyond the (essential) principle of pleasure, the ambition of this exhibition, in the manner of a critical text, is to make us see and hear the forms that Jarmusch invents from another angle. To go beyond elegance to better grasp the beauty of the gesture.

        To expose series of secret gestures.
        To expose series of concrete gestures.
        Expose sounds.
        Exhibiting ways of speaking.
        Exhibit a certain way of walking. Expose the world in a different way.

       Jim Jarmusch has made all his films explorations of territories.

This exhibition can only be thought of as a back and forth between the film and the exhibition. All of his films will be screened at the CINEMA GALERIES. In the same building, we will be able to move from one state (the film) to the other (the plan-picture) to better play at surprising ourselves. To make Jarmusch travel as he himself has taken us: remember the bayou of Down by Law, the original and magical Far West of Dead Man, Gosth Dog and his samurai gaze floating over American cities. Remember the sentimental itineraries of Broken Flowers, Spain filmed as an adventure in The Limit of Control, ghostly Tangier rhyming with vampiric Detroit in the beautiful Only Lovers Left Alive. Remember the shattered New York of Permanent Vacation (his first film, in 1980). Remember the two boys and the girl who don’t dare admit their feelings to each other in the desolate Florida of Stranger Than Paradise.

This exhibition/retrospective takes place at a time when two new Jarmusch films are being released in turn. The first is a drama, Paterson, which was in competition at Cannes, starring Adam Driver and Golshifteh Farahani. Paterson will be released at CINEMA GALERIES on 7 December. Later, Gimme Danger, Jim Jarmusch’s documentary about the furious youth of the Stooges, will be released.

To accompany this event, which has been produced with Jim Jarmusch’s full consent, a book will also be published by Capricci, signed by Philippe Azoury, co-curator with Edouard Meier, of the exhibition. It will be an essay, or more precisely a ballad in Jim’s world, an infinite conversation with Jarmusch, a passionate and intimate walk through his films.

Philippe Azoury

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Jim Jarmusch – Jim Jarmusch was born in January 1953 in Ohio (USA). He is a filmmaker who has made some fifteen independent films, all of which have had international careers and have been selected or awarded prizes at Cannes. They include Stranger than Paradise (1984), Down by Law (1986), Dead Man (1995), Gosth Dog (1999), Broken FLowers (2005), Only Lovers Left Alive (2013), Paterson (2016). Jim Jarmusch is also a musician (the bands Del Byzanteens and SQÜRL), and practices poetry and collage.

Philippe Azoury – Born in France in 1971, he is a film critic (Libération, les Inrockuptibles, les Cahiers du Cinéma, le Nouvel Observateur, la NRF…), author of essays on Philippe Garrel, Werner Schroeter, Jean Cocteau, Fantômas, or on the photographer Antoine d’Agata. His essay on Jim Jarmusch will be published at the end of 2016 by Capricci.

Edouard Meier – Born in France in 1981, Edouard Meier is one of the founders of CINEMA GALERIES in 2012. He has produced re-trospectives and exhibitions of Alexander Sokurov, David Lynch, Tsai Ming-Liang, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, etc. He is also associated with the production companies Météroes (France), Wrong Men (Belgium).

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Practical information
JIM JARMUSCH – ANOTHER LOOK

DATE | 24.11.2016 / 12.02.2017.

VERNISSAGE | AVANT PREMIERE PATERSON 23.11.2016 / 19:00 – 22:00
19:00 OPENING RECEPTION
21:00 “PATERSON” PREMIERE (advance sale available)

CURATORS | Philippe Azoury and Edouard Meier.

RETROSPECTIVE | 8,50 euros / 6,50 euros.

EXHIBITION | 5 euros / 3 euros. Every day from 12:00 to 19:00 (20:00 on retrospective nights). Closed on Mondays. (Closed 25.12 | 01.01 | !!! 21.01 )

UGC ART BOX | A work from the exhibition will be presented exclusively in the “Art Box” of the UGC cinema in Rue Stassart in Ixelles.

BOOKS | A book by Philippe Azoury will be published by Capricci on the occasion of the exhibition. And an ephemeral bookshop will be set up with the help of the Tropismes bookshop.

LISTENING SESSION | We have invited the label ” I WILL PLAY THIS SONG ONCE AGAIN RECORDS “, created by Sylvain Chauveau and Florent Garnier, to organise a listening session around the cinema of Jim Jarmusch.

HORS LES MURS | Special screening at l’atelier 210