LA BELLE IMAGE in association with Silvia Costa, 2021
stills from the choreographic film La Belle Image (2021)
The project was commissioned by the Comédie de Valence to Silvia Costa and Pierre-Philippe Hofmann.
When you arrive in a new city, you immediately notice the elements that haven't been there for a long
time. You see them as in a collage, recut, coloured, with pieces that have attached themselves to
others over time.
What is the image of a city? How is it created? Through a series of meetings and interviews with
elderly people who have witnessed the transformation of the cities of Valence and Romans-sur-Isère,
Silvia Costa and visual artist Pierre-Philippe Hofmann hope to shed light on what these witnesses
have seen, what they remember, to give memory, even the simplest, everyday memory, a narrative quality.
La Belle Image is a three-part tour of the city. It begins at Place Saint-Jean, where the participants
meet through an exhibition of their portraits and audio testimonies. Spectators are then invited to
wander around Valence, observing the passage of time in each of the places mentioned in the interviews;
archive images have been superimposed on reality in different parts of the city. The tour ends at the
Théâtre de la Ville with the screening of a series of films, one for each participant, dealing
with the opposition between movement and immobility.
stills from interviews La Belle Image (2021)