Charlotte Clermont:

du soleil, que ça existe (of the sun, that it exists)

of the sun, that it exists, 2025
9 min. 5 sec.

The work of the sun, that it exists (orig. du soleil, que ça existe) examines the temporalities through which the body forms, stores, and creates what we translate as the real. Focusing on longing, distance, and language, this text-based project explores the expansiveness of both language and landscape, by installing spaciousness in the dialogue and by considering landscapes as bodies.

Because of veils that obscure or illuminate the images, the inability to perceive is experienced at times in almost-erased spaces, at others in velvety dark spaces, where only details are revealed through the flickering of the film’s solarization. The rhythm between light and darkness echoes the movements of the sea, adding aqueous and sensuous layers to the film, where images seem to exist outside of the often narrative space of cinema, becoming instead paintings or photographs in motion.

The overall feeling of this short film is inspired by Marguerite Duras’ The Malady of Death (trans. 1986) in which she describes, at the end of the book, how a window overlooking a dark sea at night becomes an element central to her work.