Emmanuel Lefrant lives and works in Paris, where he makes films, all self-produced, exclusively on celluloid. The films lie on the idea of representing, of revealing an invisible world (the secret forms of emulsion), a nature that one does not see.

In 2000, he founded with Nicolas Berthelot, Alexis Constantin and Stéphane Courcy the collective Nominoë. They created together performances which have been played in many prestigious places, as the Pompidou Centre, the Serralvès Foundation (Porto) or the Edinburgh International Film Festival (Black Box Live).

“I wanted to make a film about this filthy, noisy train and it’s packed-in passengers that would look beautiful, like the New York City paintings of John Sloan, and I wanted it to go with one of my Duke Ellington records, Daybreak Express.
I didn’t know much about film editing, or in fact about shooting, so I bought a couple of rolls of Kodachrome at the drugstore, and figured that since the record was about three minutes long, by shooting carefully I could fit the whole thing onto one roll of film. Of course that didn’t work since I couldn’t start and stop my hand-wound camera that easily so I ended up shooting both rolls and even a few more before I was through. It took about three days to film, and then sat in a closet for several years until I figured out how to edit it and make a print that I could show on a projector. 
I took it to the Paris theater to see if they would run it. By pure chance it ended up with the Alec Guiness comedy, The horse’s mouth which ran there for nearly a year. Since I had a large collection of jazz records, I figured I’d found a way to break into the film business with music films, and it did get me started, but I was never able to make another film like Daybreak”.

“In 1989 the East window of Grand Central Terminal in New York City was re-opened after being sealed off from view for over 40 years. The light that flooded in was glorious. The sun lined up with the canyon of buildings in front of the window for about a half hour a day in the early spring. I was teaching upstate at the time and would pass through the station twice a week. The film was shot on the way to the train. It was filmed with one of the first 16mm cameras ever made, a Bell and Howell Filmo 75 and also a Beauleau R16. It was shot on sound recording film and a bit of tri-x and then printed onto sound recording film. This film, the nature of the light and some of the un-coated antique lenses I used give the film it’s ‘period’ look. Filming the light, and regarding people and archecture as ‘light modulators’ was my point of inspiration. I tried to capture the spontanious choreography of the hustling crowds in a sort of Balletic way. The film is a city ballet (as oppossed to a city symphony)”.

Music by Shay Lynch.

Un film sur Times Square, les sons et les mouvements de cette célèbre intersection. Le film fut tourné en noir et blanc avec des filtres couleurs (rouge, vert et bleu) puis les prises furent refilmées avec une tireuse optique avec ces mêmes filtres. Les couches des différentes images tournées caméra à l’épaule créent une agitation dans les séquences tandis que les publicités sur les panneaux d’affichage tentent de s’extraire les unes par rapport aux autres.