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For Henriette, resident of La Défense, Paris, from 1959 to 2016.
Official YIFY movies site: YTS.MX
It's a bit of a blurred memory.
We are both leaning on your kitchen windowsill.
I must have been ten.
You are telling me about when your came here in 59.
It was the highest building in the area.
Through that same window,
you could see the Seine River.
And then...
year by year,
you saw the skyscrapers grow taller and taller,
closer and closer,
until one day,
the view from your window sent back your own reflection.
After that, you had your heart attack.
Then, you moved house.
A year passed before melancholy took hold of me and...
with it came the desire to return
to draw the skyscrapers.
The Great Arch
A film by Camille Authouart
Day one...
7:30 am.
It's rush hour in La Défense.
The footsteps echo on the concrete.
Everyone knows their way.
No-one needs their eyes to guide them.
There's a waft of take-away coffee in the air.
There's movement all around me.
However, out of habit,
I draw what's still.
Day two...
Read on the internet:
"With over 70 works of art spread around the district,
"La Défense, Paris, is the biggest open-air museum in Europe."
I can't grasp how I didn't notice it before.
There's "Ikaria", "The Ring of Windsocks",
"Monumental Fountain", "Octopus",
"Mechanical Bird", "Signals",
"Traits d'union", "Les Hommes de la cité",
"The Car On the Lamppost", "Water Lilies",
"Double lines indeterminate", "The Three Trees",
"La Défonce", "In the Footsteps of Our Fathers,"
"Fantastic Characters", "The Chimneys", "The Thumb"...
"The Red Spider".
Day five...
This morning there's a man, barefoot,
sleeping under The Great Arch.
No-one seems to notice him.
Day six...
I had forgotten this westerly wind and this seaside-like air.
He's here again today.
I wonder what he's dreaming about.
Day thirteen...
it has become a ritual.
He's my first drawing of the day.
Each day, it's as if I get to know him better,
as if the lines of his body tell me about him.
Day 28... I haven't seen him for days.
I trekked all over the district.
I walked to the edge of La Défense
but he has disappeared without a trace.
Since he left, the skyscrapers bore me.
Tomorrow, I won't be back.
1983 - It's a modern Arc de Triomphe. A symbol of hope.
In the future, people will be able to meet freely here
under the Arch of Triumph of Man.
Johan Otto V. Spreckelsen Architect of The Great Arch.
Subtitles: Thomas Carey