Friday evening at 9 p.m., Memento, the Departmental Space for Contemporary Art, is organizing a special scopitone evening in Auch. The opportunity to honor the ancestor of the video clip, in a festive atmosphere.
Sylvie Vartan, Johnny Hallyday or Claude François singing their 1960s hits in videos, this is the program for the evening “Scopitone 60’s party” at Memento tomorrow. The Departmental Contemporary Art Space, associated with the Montesquiou on the rock’s festival, offers a journey through time through the cult object of scopitone. These musical minifilms on 16mm film were very popular in France and the United States during the “yé-yé” era.
Xavier Le Falher collects old cinema material with his association Projectivers, he lends his tapes for the event. “The scopitone machine broadcast sound and image, in color, in bars and casinos,” he explains. The great artists of the time played the game and “the scopitone also allowed the discovery of little-known artists” adds the collector.
Bikini and improbable decorations
But beyond the songs, it is also a very particular aesthetic, with the girls in bikinis and the improbable decorations, like the singer Antoine who turned his song “Les Élucubrations” in a car junkyard. The location of this evening is not by chance. Karine Mathieu, director of Memento, chose the cloister for this evening outdoor screening. This former Carmelite also housed the departmental archives. She says: “This event takes on meaning in an archive place, beyond popular entertainment, there is an issue of safeguarding heritage. “
Xavier le Fahler collects scopitones with his association Les Projectivers.
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This evening promises a festive moment with forty French musical films, but also American. Indeed, Xavier Le Falher recounts having recently acquired scopitones from Kansas with an extraordinary history: “They belonged to Francis Ford Coppola who had installed them in bars and casinos, before the Mafia took them over and they fall into oblivion until today ”. This free evening, but by reservation (on 05 62 06 42 53), imposes the rule of the sanitary pass with a limited gauge.
Gradually replaced by video
Xavier le Falher specifies: “there is an entire industry that was built on scopitone that few people know today, often with low budget shoots”. Indeed, with the arrival of video, scopitone disappeared in the mid-1970s. These current events, which combine music and cinema around scopitone, revive nostalgia for those who knew it in its heyday. , while introducing it to subsequent generations
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