Biography

Pierre Bressan, born in 1956, died in 2011. Born in Nancy, this filmmaker had a short but intense career. Over the period 1976-1985, he directed one commissioned feature, two medium-length films, six short films, and an extended cinema performance. He is also a film programmer at the FUFU (Festival Universitaire du Film Underground) in Nancy. Like the meetings in Rennes and Toulouse, Cinémarge in La Rochelle, and the Cinéma Différent section of the Hyères film festival, these festivals remind us that experimentation was also, and above all, happening outside the capital.

A very quiet personality and a dark dandy, Pierre Bressan builds, throughout his films, an extremely consistent universe, very black, even gothic, where he gives free rein to his taste for stoic, Schroeterian poses, empty and strangely lit rooms, black costumes, a suspended, underexposed time, and Nancy-esque lights. Although his work is very singular, it could be compared to other films of that time, be it the adaptations of Poe by Roger Corman, the films of the so-called School of the Body, or the cinema of the pose: Philippe Garrel, Yvan Lagrange, Denis Develoux or Patrice Énard.

Why he suddenly stopped making films is difficult to know. There is one hypothesis, however: Pierre Bressan is one of those rare romantic filmmakers for whom filming represents everything, and for whom each shooting is trying because it requires a total investment, close to madness. Unlike filmmakers who film when asked to or because they are given money, he is one of those who only films when their desire is intense and burning. And this fire rarely lasts long: then comes the need to stop, to take a rest, to take the films off the streets, for a while at least. Ten years after his death, it is time to give it a new life.