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The Mars Project

Louis Rémy
France
13'

Through a collection of archived videos found in the depths of YouTube, ordinary people apply to join a space mission team heading to Mars in the year 2022. This announcement from Mars Venture, nearly a decade ago, reveals our society’s interest in the conquest of the red planet and prompts us to question the colonial rhetoric inherent in New Space projects.

Can you explain this gap in your resume? In a simple montage of the archive of video-applications for Mars One — a sensational scam from the early 2010s that promised people the chance of becoming the first colonizers of Mars —, the young filmmaker Louis Rémy encompasses an entire world, precisely the capitalism that Mark Fisher described as imagining itself continuing on other planes once the Earth won’t suffice anymore. And, indeed, for over 200.000 applicants, life on Earth, apparently unsatisfactory, wasn’t enough. The Mars Project is a fascinating spectacle of the protocols through which people sell their own time, story and image, a spectacle about the violence of human civilization, grotesque precisely through the banality it represents. (Călin Boto)

Screening date and location

September 28th, 4:00 PM, Cinemateca Eforie

Tickets

Awards & Festivals

Louis Rémy

Louis Rémy was born in Strasbourg and is based in Paris. A student of video and photography at the École nationale supérieure des arts décoratifs. His work explores the connections between individual and collective history, with a particular interest in conspiracy theories and the mechanisms behind belief formation, through the genres of speculative fiction, fantasy, and science fiction.

  • Technical sheet
  • Production and distribution
  • Photography: Louis Rémy
  • Sound: Louis Rémy
  • Editing: Louis Rémy
  • Produced by: ENSAD - École nationale supérieure des arts décoratifs

Screens

Colonial Follies

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Parallel Botany

Magdalena Bermudez | Duration 11'

Still lives of real fruit meet botanical illustrations of plant galls to expose the paradox of dissection: each time we cut something in two, we merely create a new exterior.

When We Encounter the World

r. Leonardo Pirondi & Zazie Ray-Trapido | Duration 11'

In 1934, an experiment by an amateur-scientist couple began. Named after a genus of moths, the Automeris Project placed a group of young children in an enclosed forest, leaving them to fend for themselves. On return visits, the couple presented self-made films, accompanied by live music, depicting the outside world.

The Mars Project

Louis Rémy | Duration 13'

Through a collection of archived videos found in the depths of YouTube, ordinary people apply to join a space mission team heading to Mars in the year 2022. This announcement from Mars Venture, nearly a decade ago, reveals our society’s interest in the conquest of the red planet and prompts us to question the colonial rhetoric inherent in New Space projects.

Wild Fruits

Bernardo Zanotta | Duration 35' 16"

The 16th century. After a period overseas in the Antarctic France, Jean Aurand finds refuge as a servant in the house of French philosopher Michel de Montaigne, where a series of fantastical events change the lives of these two men forever.

The Third World After the Sun

Analú Laferal & Tiagx Vélez | Duration 19' 50"

A transvestite ritual performed by the artists Analú Laferal and Tiagx Vélez opens a portal and generates an encounter with a European missionary from the fifteenth century who has delved deep into the jungle in order to fight the belief of animals as divine. A transmaterial dream, shrouded by the penumbra cast by cosmic horrors.
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