In January 2018, the construction of an airport in rural Notre- Dame-des-Landes was officially canceled, putting an end to years of resistance led by one of the most important activist communities in France. From 2022-2023, filmmakers Guillaume Cailleau and Ben Russell immersed themselves in the ZAD (zoneto- defend) to create a portrait of collective life in the years after this unprecedented success. The resulting work documents the transformation of a local struggle into a new ecological protest movement - culminating with the Battle of Sainte-Soline in March 2023, where an act of collective direct action against water privatization was again met by the brutality of State violence. Filmmaking processes are made up of chemical reactions with light that end up generating the image on celluloid. It is precisely from this abyss between what is filmed and what is seen that the great power of DIRECT ACTION by Guillaume Cailleau & Ben Russell manifests itself. Shot on S16mm, the filmmakers document, through an intimate and immersive process, part of the daily life of an important collective of activists who occupied a territory against airport expansion on the outskirts of Paris. The portrayal of the group’s direct actions extends to absolutely every aspect of their lives, from the preparation of bread to a long night on watch. By praising extended time in contrast to ultra-mechanistic life processes, Cailleau & Russell build through blatant simplicity a profound portrait of an activism that reflects on what one thinks and what one does. - Lucas Camargo de Barros, Indielisboa

biografia

Ben Russell (1976) is an American artist, filmmaker and curator whose work lies at the intersection of ethnography and psychedelia. His films and installations are in direct conversation with the history of the documentary image, providing a time-based inquiry into trance phenomena. Russell was an exhibiting artist at documenta 14 (2017) and his work has been presented at the Centre Georges Pompidou, the Museum of Modern Art, the Tate Modern, the Museum of Modern Art Chicago, the Venice Film Festival and the Berlinale, among others. He is a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship (2008), a FIPRESCI International Critics Prize (IFFR 2010, Gijón 2017), premiered his second and third feature films at the Locarno Film Festival (2013, 2017) and won the Encounters Grand Prize at the Berlinale Film Festival (2024). Curatorial projects include Magic Lantern (Providence, USA, 2005-2007), BEN RUSSELL (Chicago, USA, 2009-2011), Hallucinations (Athens, Greece, 2017) and Double Vision (Marseille, France 2024). He is currently based in Marseille, France.

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