The Unanswered Question Revisited

Benoît Labourdette’s film and music (2’07s, 2018).

13 June 2018. Published by Benoît Labourdette.

1 min

What is life? Can simple little plastic animals help us find the answer to this question?

A tribute to Charles Ives (1874-1954), composer of “The Unanswered Question” (1908 - musical piece for string ensemble, solo trumpet and wind quartet).

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The Unanswered Question Revisited (MPEG4)

All the films in « Short films »

Waves are water

A film by Benoît Labourdette (4’14s, 2023).

Meditation on the depth of feeling in the world, based on a quote from Thich Nhat Hanh.

Cold fire at the castle

A film by Benoît Labourdette (1’17s, 2023).

At times, past, present, fiction and reality are intertwined. The present moment becomes a tale.

Heart of/for freedom

A film by Benoît Labourdette (1’40s, 2019).

Beyond the barriers, barbed wire, prisons, the living heart is still beating.

Cinema folded

A film by Benoît Labourdette (3’53s, 2013).

Where is cinema ? What is cinema ?

Night road

A film by Benoît Labourdette (3’44s, 2013).

“Small child at the bottom of the back seat of the car, travel and night lights are not very real. With the help of tire, three minutes of travel on the street appear three long hours of (…)

News from father

A movie by Benoît Labourdette (2’19s, 2014).

Life on a blank screen...

The old hallway

A film by Benoît Labourdette (2’44s, 2021).

The adult world, incomprehensible to a dominated, abused child.

Fire (white monkey)

A film by Benoît Labourdette (3’14s, 2017).

At night, when anxiety is there, if one dares to look beyond the ashes of life, one can see an image of salvation.

Poster

A film by Benoît Labourdette (3’02s, 2012).

A touch film, made of paper and words.

The red jars

A film by Benoît Labourdette (2’27s, 2021).

Man domesticates nature. For good or bad reasons? Maybe it’s a little more complicated than we thought. Hints for a philosophical reflection

Accident

A film by Benoît Labourdette (1’57s, 2018).

“Accident on a white desert dune. There are only wrinkles left.”

Sleeping in Paris

A film by Benoît Labourdette (3’41s, 2023).

Finding meaning in life, despite its most terrible tragedies

Already the architecture

A film by Benoît Labourdette (4’36s, 2018).

Contemplative quest for meaning in an abandoned summer camp.

The fear

A film by Benoît Labourdette (9’28s, 2016).

Sensitive sharing of therapeutic indications to fight against fear, this kind of fear present inside of each.

Liberty is in your mind

A film by Benoît Labourdette (2’15s, 2018).

Remember that freedom is conquered first within us, whatever the external situation.

Under the cobblestones of Belfast Beach

A film by Benoît Labourdette (1’05s, 2005).

The fascination of being able to film what happens in everyday life, thanks to the first mobile phones equipped with cameras.

Metro meditation

A film by Benoît Labourdette (7’, 2017).

To be there without being there, not to be there by being there. To be above all within oneself. Meditate. In the subway.

What do you fear?

A film by Benoît Labourdette (2’12s, 2022).

Make a list of your fears, to maybe trigger something.

No entry

A film by Benoît Labourdette (2’58s, 2013).

Body, space and timeA body in the city at night. The body of the eye. The look of the body. The experience of coming and going, which is the breath of a city. Is the time in the city, is a (…)

No picture on screen

A film by Benoît Labourdette ( 2’54s , 2015).

The mystery of physiological processes at work in a movie theater.

Blue eyes

A film by Benoît Labourdette (4’47s, 2016).

Facing our child, real or imagined.

Vanitas

A film by Benoît Labourdette (12’56s, 2016). With Bénédicte Loyen.

Feverish dream in a baroque chapel. A vanitas with words.

Light in a window

A film by Benoît Labourdette (2’06s, 1999-2019).

A contemplative journey through the energy of light, between nature and electronics.

On the void

A film by Benoît Labourdette (3’35s, 2021).

Meditate, yes... but how to do it?

Spectra

A film by Benoît Labourdette, in collaboration with Louise Moaty (3’59s, 2014).

Charlotte Delbo’s words emanate from human traces of people who were living there a few hours earlier.

The beach

A film by Benoît Labourdette (2’54s, 2021).

On an indoor beach, memories and sensual projections.

FrEE zonE

A film by Benoît Labourdette (3’52s, 2017).

The remembrance of a drama, and an unexpected confession.

The line

A film by Benoît Labourdette (4’06s, 2020).

Light is what gives existence.

The book’s title

A film by Benoît Labourdette (6’41s, 2021).

On the difficulty of writing, of forming a sensitive and true trace of the most intimate and precious things. Immersion in the head of an author in search of the memory of a moment of sensuality.

Jesus

A film by Benoît Labourdette (2’48s, 2016). With the voice of Bénédicte Loyen.

In Western society, the written language was invented again to name God. Our words carry weight of the religious, in spite of us. Seek to understand ...

Memory Palace

A film by Benoît Labourdette (2’17s, 2022).

How can a simple place become the crucible for the revelation of our childhood memories?

Behind the scenes

A film by Benoît Labourdette (1’41s, 2005).

Preparations for a cinematic event.

Chairs

A film by Benoît Labourdette (3’26s, 2012). Musical improvisation by Olivier Mellano.

We all sat on chairs in classrooms. We make these chairs ? What do they give us ?How they welcome us ? Can we look at them differently than in a utilitarist point of view ? Besides, are they (…)

Pascal’s flowers

A film by Benoît Labourdette (3’18s, 2011).

Invent a tale. Ground the story into reality. Why does the shape of the tale in 2011 ? Probably to make again metaphor, universal. A simple love story.

Teachers’ lounge

A film by Benoît Labourdette (2’07s, 2012).

Everyday life without apparent problems, in this teacher’s room of a high school near Paris. But it conceals dark secrets... a fiction inspired by real events.Ten years after the making of this (…)

Imaginary territory

Artwork digital video. Benoît Labourdette (5’51s, 2014).

Abstract shapes, children color from the sky.

ROSEBUD 2022, the end of cinema

A film by Benoît Labourdette (4’45s, 2022).

To grieve is to carry more weight. It is to live with the absence. It is to become more lucid. It means having to be stronger. It is to be more joyful of everything.

Made in China

A film by Benoît Labourdette (6’07s, 2017).

Plastic animals are talking to us.

A seated man

A film by Benoît Labourdette (7’37s, 2022).

The work of mourning, such a slow movement of life.

Inside time

Film by Benoît Labourdette (3’34 s, 2016).

Reading of the last paragraphs of “’Remembrance of Things Past” by Marcel Proust. Links between literature, painting and movement.

Each morning

A film by Benoît Labourdette (5’44s, 2013).

Charles, 37-year old boy who lost his mother a year ago, sometimes perceive the world in a distorted way, multiplied, time and space losing their reality. A meeting will change his life.

Dead leaf

A film by Benoît Labourdette (8’33s, 2012).

A little piece of nature in the middle of the city is a microcosm of nature impulses of life. Love, the mix of bodies, dramas, reunion, always. Crosses of stories on feelings and bodies.

The red house

A film by Benoît Labourdette (2’17s, 2020).

Back to the place that resources us.

Going to the sea?

A film by Benoît Labourdette (2’35s, 2022).

Not yet understanding the disappearance of his child. Looking for him. Not finding him. Try to change the perspective.

Fragile and forgotten silhouettes

A film by Benoît Labourdette (3’15s, 2023).

Do we remember these living figures, near or far, multiple, these moments of intense life? As in a painting by Bruegel the Elder, there is no whole, but a multitude of small details juxtaposed.

Door

A film by Benoît Labourdette (1’54s, 2018).

Listening at the doors. A deeper, poetic and contemplative exercise than one might imagine at first glance.

Barcelona hotel

A film by Benoît Labourdette (4’44s, 2012).

Autofiction on adultery.

The men on camera

A film by Benoît Labourdette (4’45s, 2015).

Visual composition, music and sound, from a noisy flying camera, referring to the movie “The Man with a Camera” (Dziga Vertov, 1929).

Back to childhood

A film by Benoîtenoît Labourdette (2’10s, 2023).

Life was a gift.

A tree in tears grows again

A film by Benoît Labourdette (2’05s, 2023).

Life after.

Perpetual motion

A film by Benoît Labourdette (1’22s, 1998).

Ode to childbirth by a young adult.

Opening soon

A film by Benoît Labourdette (2’34s, 2013).

The speech of a father to his son for the opening of their next clothing store. Capitalism, sexism...

At the time

A film by Benoît Labourdette (2’31s, 2020).

The most beautiful memories can be without nostalgia, because life goes on.

The meeting

A film by Benoît Labourdette (5’16s, 2011).

A meeting, like a thousand other meetings. No, it is your meeting.

Trio

Experimental film by Benoît Labourdette (7’26s, 2015). With Marta Zielinska and Senghte Vanh Bouapha.

A couple of “Living ghosts” emanate from the walls, floors, windows, of an old apartment.

The kiss 1234567

A film by Benoît Labourdette (12’46s, 2013).

How to share the silent screams, behind families with smooth histories ?

Choir

A film by Benoît Labourdette (4’10s, 2012).

Music softens morals.

Bell tower

A film by Benoît Labourdette (2’26s, 2013).

On the way to autofiction, a conversation between a father and his son, played by the same voice.

Sands Hotel

A film by Benoît Labourdette (6’28s, 2016).

Remember the presence of the lost loved one in a hotel room surrounded by sand.

Relic

A film by Benoît Labourdette (2’49s, 2024).

How can we give a place in our Life to those who have left?

The hand

A film by Benoît Labourdette (3’03s, 2021).

Man’s hand is what gives him speech.

Openings

A film by Benoît Labourdette (3’51s, 2013).

Paradoxical injunctions in school space of a College, with a musical treatment.

At the station

A film by Benoît Labourdette (2’41s, 2016).

The intimate perception of the inner voices of passing humans, which leads to a choice of life.

Serious accident for a traveler

A film by Benoît Labourdette (2’43s, 2005).

In 2005, the cameras appear in the phones, and invite to film the daily. One of the first movies shot on mobile phones.

End of the silent movie

A film by Benoît Labourdette (2’31s, 2021).

At times, time and space are reversed.

Stones of memory

A film by Benoît Labourdette (8’44s, 2021).

A meditation on the construction of one’s own memory, one’s “memory palace”.

Nature

A flim by Benoît Labourdette (3’08s, 2021).

Getting back in touch with nature is not that simple.

Brahim’s backpack

A film by Benoît Labourdette (5’04s, 2016).

A rat race, to mourn the departure of the beloved.

Pencil camera

A film by Benoît Labourdette (2’11s, 2005).

One of the first movies shot with mobile phone.

Step by step

A film by Benoît Labourdette (3’21s, 2021).

One foot in front of the other, but where to?

At the Venice stadium

A film by Benoît Labourdette (6’11s, 2018).

A traumatic event disrupts the past, the present and the notion of reality.

Here lived filmmaker Boris Lehman

A film by Benoît Labourdette (8’50s, 2013).

The visit of an empty Paris apartment, where several people lived successively. Memory fumes artists Sophie Calle and Boris Lehman.

An adult tree

A film by Benoît Labourdette (2’19s, 2022).

If I had known, if I could have, and yet I was always there.

Around

A film by Benoît Labourdette (3’33s, 2013).

In Vitrolles, in the south of France, a rocky peak overlooking the city. It is found scattered clothes and a mobile phone, in which there was a movie and a text. The work of a madman, it seems, (…)

Reflection alone

A film by Benoît Labourdette (2’38s, 2022).

How to find oneself and the world after the shock?

Far

A film by Benoît Labourdette (3’43s, 2013).

“Far, far away in my thoughts, at the end of the screen of my eyes printed with electronic images.”

The young witch

A film by Benoît Labourdette (2’23s, 2020).

The child knows her powers.

The event

A film by Benoît Labourdette (2’38s, 2021).

Observe what is going on behind the eternal appearances.

Vire, next stop

A film by Benoît Labourdette (3’48s, 2013).

One day a train. Chopped audiovisual form, from which emerge childhood memories, confrontation with the self-forgetfulness.

Animals at the window, the hill of light

A film by Benoît Labourdette (5’12s, 2019).

Eat the animals or not? What if the animals speak for themselves?

Vocal strings

A film by Benoît Labourdette (2’31s, 2012).

From the eroticism of the musical instrument.

Men and doll

A film by Benoît Labourdette (4’58s, 2014).

Bordeaux. Saint-Michel square with roadworks. Night. Hardly anyone goes. The memory of a tragedy within the body of a disjointed doll.

Clément Thomas Joseph Marianne Philippe

A film by Benoît Labourdette (11’17s, 2013).

In life, the most important things, whether happy or tragic, often happen by accident. The story of a man, not young, caught in the spiral of family repetition and humiliation experienced. It will (…)

Oh night

A film by Benoît Labourdette (1’29s, 2022).

A postcard seems to come to life, and write its own legend.

The Unanswered Question Revisited

Benoît Labourdette’s film and music (2’07s, 2018).

What is life? Can simple little plastic animals help us find the answer to this question?

Paris, end of August

A film by Benoît Labourdette, 4 minutes, 2009, digital, Scope 2.35, Color, stereo.

We meet a homeless in the street and we forget, one minute later.

The land

A film by Benoît Labourdette (2’25s, 2020).

“A place of one’s own, what is it?”

Paris Yellow Pages

A film by Benoît Labourdette (1’, 2019).

Paris as seen by its paper directory in 2019.

Are you calling for help?

A film by Benoît Labourdette (2’01s, 2022).

Step by step, the quest for life, meeting a tragic fate.

Dream

A film by Benoît Labourdette (2’15s, 2005).

Looks and desires in the subway.

Indifference

A film by Benoît Labourdette (2’53s, 2005).

Rediscover the world, between its real and imaginary dimensions, with a new shooting tool.

Trees and a woman

A film by Françoise Simpère and Benoît Labourdette (6’38s, 2020).

A walk, an intimate dialogue with oneself and with nature, a path to find oneself, to be in the world. A film born from a dialogue between images and text.

The crossing of the Comic!

A film by Macha Makeïeff and Benoît Labourdette (9’53s, 2015). With Thomas Morris and the dog Siegfried.

A frantic sequence shot through all the unusual places of the Comic Opera building in Paris. The pursuit of an imaginary singer, in search of her dog and her “Maestro”!

Back in time

A film by Benoît Labourdette (1’26s, 2023).

What if, what if, what if... sometimes you wish you could turn back the clock.

Uprooted

A film by Benoît Labourdette (4’01s, 2021).

To see oneself in front of the roots of a tree.

Fragile hopscotch in the sky

A film by Benoît Labourdette (3’31s, 2019).

The inner experience of a moment of pedagogical innovation in the classroom.

The book

A film by Benoît Labourdette (3’27s, 2018).

Gather around a book, gather yourself.

Two hands

A film by Benoît Labourdette (3’07s, 2023).

How to accompany the one who is no longer there?

Just a tree

A film by Benoît Labourdette - text by Sonia Leplat (1’28s, 2021).

Thinking, overthinking...

Straw fire

A film by Benoît Labourdette (2’27s, 2019).

Dead animals are helplessly witnessing human violence.

Reserved for nurses

A film by Benoît Labourdette (3’19s, 2011).

The trace, in the places, of the stories and dramas that took place there. A reserved parking space, another reserved parking space, empty at the moment we look at them, but which have seen so (…)

Spike proteins

A film by Benoît Labourdette (2’51s, 2023).

People who have stood up for the respect of humanity are always present, even to help those who had decried them.Directed, text, voice, image and music by Benoît Labourdette, 2023.This (…)

I’ve seen you

A film by Benoît Labourdette (4’09s, 2014).

Where is our body ?

Luminous object

A film by Benoît Labourdette (1’42s, 2019).

“When the eye, emerging from the darkness, suddenly sees a luminous object, it will seem much larger at first sight than in the long run.” Leonardo da Vinci, Notebooks (optical).

H building

A film by Benoît Labourdette (7’03s, 2012).

The metaphor for the journey of life of a human being through a visual journey “kaleidoscopic” in a building.

In their absence

A film by Benoît Labourdette (1’43s, 2019).

There are times when you have the feeling, if not the certainty, that you’ve missed the point.

Your attention please

A film by Benoît Labourdette (3’08s, 2011).

A station dock, a Flip camera on the ground, the voice-over of the stationmaster, waiting travelers, a train arriving...

That light

A flm by Benoît Labourdette (1’36s, 2022).

One night, as if nothing had happened.

I parked my scooter

A film by Benoît Labourdette (1’38s, 2003).

“I parked my scooter, I lost my scooter. If someone found it, he can bring it to me.” Small musical and visual variation humorous.

Myopia

A film by Benoît Labourdette (2’33s, 2021).

Myopia can be triggered by trauma. We are left with poetry.

Hold your right

A film by Benoît Labourdette (2’57s, 2005).

Movement of the human gaze, gaze of the machines, movement of the world...

A heritage of life

A film by Françoise Simpère et Benoît Labourdette (2’13s, 2020).

What we know we’ll take with us on the day we die is probably what can feed our life energy.

Little moon

A film by Benoît Labourdette (1’26s, 2023).

I try to look further, to feel deeper.

Madeleine

A film by Benoît Labourdette (3’23s, 2010).

Musical nostalgia in the subway in Toronto.

Next train

A film by Benoît Labourdette (2’51s, 2024).

Time stands still. And then life returns. Pain is life. Sweetness is life. Replications. Messages. Double helix. Heal. ExtensionsWhen we live through borderline or traumatic experiences, we may (…)

Parking dance #100

A film by Sandra Abouav and Benoît Labourdette (3’27s, 2020).

Flying danced deliriums sung. A choreography between a drone and dancers, for the hundredth and last opus of Sandra Abouav’s “Parking Dance” series (2017-2020). Presentation by Sandra AbouavIt (…)

Love in the confined present tense

A film by Benoît Labourdette, with the collaboration of Marie Désert, François Cany and Jean-Baptiste Hanak (1’00s, 2020).

Palimpsest of confined lives, of pictorial references, of nascent love, of graphic and audiovisual performance, between Paris and Nantes in 2020.

Break

A film by Benoît Labourdette (3’36, 2012).

“Break”, this time of the working day in which humans are placed in a non-productive state finally.

City lights

A film by Benoît Labourdette (4’00s, 2023).

Our two eyes see left-right with a gap, before-after with memory, front-back with their mobility; they create relief and depth.

First

A film by Benoît Labourdette (6’29s, 2013).

A former disused hotel on the Place du Capitole in Toulouse is the scene of an inner musical divagation.

Coco

A film by Benoît Labourdette (2’15s, 2020).

A coconut shares her image problems: will she succeed in gaining confidence in her qualities?

Black series

A film by Benoît Labourdette (10’06s, 2015). With Marion Geerebaert.

After the death was sown into arbitrariness, a young woman comes back to haunt her mate.

Remembering Alice

A film by Benoît Labourdette (6’40s, 2017). With Marion Geerebaert.

A mother returns in the footsteps of her missing daughter. The work of mourning, like the work of birth, is a work of unconditional love.

Short films

I make short films as a painter makes paintings, usually in a lonely way, away from academic practices of making cinema. Some films are made in a very spontaneous way, others can take years to mature. I explore the meeting between the image and the world. These are experimental works, which often also tell stories...