First trailer for Stéphane Hueber-Blies and Nicolas Blies CECI EST MON CŒUR

CECI EST MON CŒUR (THIS IS MY HEART) is the new work by the Blies brothers (ZERO IMPUNITY), produced between Luxembourg, France and Canada by a_Bahn, Lucid Realities and PHI Studio. Previewed at Venice Immersive, the Venice Biennale, we present their first trailer.

This is an extract from the Director’s Q&A included in the Press Kit:

What are the origins and inspirations behind CECI EST MON CŒUR?

Ever since we were children, we’ve both built our lives on a lack of love for our bodies. Simultaneously inhabited by shame and anguish, we both wanted, for dierent reasons, to see it disappear, to see it permanently erased from the eyes of others and from our own.

Stéphane: I was sexually abused at a scout camp when I was 9. Since then I’ve totally rejected my body—I’ve hated it. I used every means and excess to abuse it, and my addictions to destroy it. Because, for me, my body had betrayed me. It carried my sense of guilt. For all those years, I believed that the fault was mine, that it was the fault of this body that carried within it the trauma that I was rejecting.

Nicolas: As for me, I’m a bit like the genetic bottom of the barrel of my family. Degenerative eye disease, hereditary coronary artery disease (the same one that took our father’s life two years ago), back deformity, severe acne, and other unidentied viruses… all these illnesses have taught me to isolate myself, to make myself invisible and, ultimately, to fall out of love with my body.

Today, we feel the need to question the diculty we have had in accepting our bodies since childhood, in accepting that these bodies can feel, express themselves, and live. Because one day the body wakes up and remembers. At a certain point, we could no longer ignore these marks. So we need to let our bodies speak for themselves because they are undoubtedly the bearers of a story—our stories. Because our body remembers, because it is our memory, it is our strength, it is the one that carries us, our only recourse. And even if for too many years, blinded and deceived, we have seen it as an enemy, in the end, it is neither responsible nor guilty. Our body is our ally. That’s when we realized that we had to let go of our guilt about our bodies to rediscover our love for them.

CECI EST MON CŒUR (THIS IS MY HEART) is the contemporary tale of an extraordinary love story, that of the reconciliation of a child with his body. A sensory and narrative creation that highlights the distorted representation we have of our own bodies. An immersive tale in which the public, wrapped in a connected garment and embellished with luminous embroidery, is carried away in a poetic experience, both oral and visual. CECI EST MON CŒUR offers a sensory odyssey in which the audience sees the connected garment light up in sync with the text of the story. A ballet of lights takes shape under the impulse of the story, a story conceived as a dialogue between the narrator and his own body. CECI EST MON CŒUR is an immersive work of the intimate, whole and organic: whether it’s the visual projections, the soundscape or the choreography of light that moves through the audience’s bodies, everything seems to breathe and react to the story. This immersive tale lasts 35′ and is accessible to all audiences. CECI EST MON CŒUR showcases the beauty of human fragility and emphasizes self-acceptance.

Funding

• Creative Europe MEDIA (EU) 2023
• Selective Funding for Production @ Film Fund Luxembourg (LU) 2023
• Région Grand Est (FR) 2022 
• Fonds d’aide à la création immersive – Aide à la préproduction @ CNC (FR) 2022
• Ville de Paris (FR) 2022 
• Procirep – Angoa (FR) 2022
• Sodec (CA) 2021
• Selective Funding for Development @ Film Fund Luxembourg (LU) 2021