ROUND MACHINE
Synopsis
This film (Fr+st Eng) is based on the music and lyrics from 'Bertier's album. In the near future, a man, a poet, wanders in a world where he seems to be the only human being. He wonders about the future of civilization. The place of women, war, fascism, cyborgs, finance. He doesn't have much hope. His memories of the old world haunt him. On his journey, he witnesses the results of a century of human destruction. He crosses universes as strange as they are surreal. Until we understand that they're dreaming. He's dreaming within the dream, which is itself a dream. A dark film about the future of the planet and human beings.
Film details
- Year
- 2024
- Runtime
- 00:25:18
- Genre
- Horror, Animation, Music, Sci-Fi, Surreal, Noir
- Country
- Belgium
- Language
- French
- Subtitles
- العربية, English, Español, Français, Português, 中文（简体）
Filmmaker's Note
Director Statement Hello, you'll find this profile very atypical. And totally outside the box. I'm often asked if I'm a film director. I answer "I don't know, but I make films". With my little production company, Moyens du bord (literally, "make do with what you've got"), we make films on very low budgets. And, above all, without any subsidies. We've always wanted to be free. We use whatever we can find. Free footage. Paid footage. Video, images, illustrations... Anything we can't find, we make ourselves or commission. We work with animators from all over the world sometimes, which is fun. Even if our work is still DIY, it's still film.
The film I'm showing you isn't my first, but it is my first long animated short (25min). A film I wrote, directed and produced, first and foremost for myself. Listening to the demo of the new album by my friends in Bertier (a Belgian rock band), Pierre's lyrics and poetry gave me the idea for this film. I then asked Yann Pechin (the famous French guitarist), who composed the music, if he would provide me with all the recorded sound tracks used to produce the musical album "Machine ronde - 2024". To my great surprise, he agreed. So I was able to use all the tracks from the album, instrumental or sung and remixed, to create the soundtrack for this film.
You could call it a short film or a music video, because it's a bit of both, and it uses exclusively the material from the 10 songs on Bertier's album. Which I don't think has ever been done before.
I hope you like this film, and that you'll make room for it at your festival. For I believe that do-it-yourselfers are always welcome among the greats. Thank you for reading.
Credits
Director
- Lucas Racasse
Writers
- Lucas Racasse
- Pierre Dungen
Producers
- Lucas Racasse
About the filmmaker
By Lucas Racasse | Moyens du Bord Productions
"He was right to name his film production company 'Means at Hand'. Pure Racasse! This is a testament to a spirit that will not let itself be dismasted, neither by pitfalls or unforeseen storms, nor by anything that would attempt to hinder his ingenious multi-starred system D, so that the thread of animated and filmed creation remains taut. A skilled all-terrain inventor, by vocation and in all circumstances, because restrictions and limitations, fortunately for him, always rhyme with solutions and inventions, despite often impecunious or, at best, modest production conditions. A craftsman and painter of digital images, he adapts and embraces each technological era in a joyful accumulation of tools filling a palette of demanding expressions, but, without barriers or taboos, works as much in excess and superabundance as in classy sobriety. There are few creative companions also fiercely attached to treading, hand in hand and step by step, the uncertain furrow of artistic research and the conception of a show to create a world of meaning and sensitivity in osmosis. For he shapes the image until it becomes living matter, making it a body equal to mine, which dances with it. The border becomes illusory and the disorder real. Since the alloy of animation and live performance comes from an uncertain forge where dimensions of flesh and blood and digital must merge, Lucas achieves this marriage by preaching the false to obtain the true, by making the trompe-l'oeil vibrate, but never the trompe-l'âme, while applying his motto: straight or crooked! And... all together! Essential for setting an ambush for emotion. From deep black in a stark void or in the jungle of wild colors, to make the world scream, to bring out beauty, brutal sensuality, to shimmer silhouettes, vibrate grain, and shine the evanescent. To think, to reflect, but to dream while creating the possible. Lucas, eagle eye and sanguine with a big heart." ROSALBA TORRES GUERRERO | dancer & choreographer | 2022 Excerpt from the book 'Every day is picture day'
