Jean-Claude Bélégou cinéma : SOLSTICE 2025

Feature film 57 minutes sound.

If there's anything to be said about Solstice, it's that you have to look at this film as a collection of memories shot by an amateur (and presumably lover) of the last summer spent with his partner (unless it was a pure staging with an actress?) before everything fell into the void.

Like a collection of images saved from the water or the fire, a batch of reels from before the digital age, accompanied by a box of various relics of little interest, bought, with the projector, for two francs six sous in a garage sale or a village fair. All of this fits in a suitcase.

Among these vestiges there was, however, this letter of break-up, or of love, we don't really know how to qualify it, which I had recorded and of which I contented myself with sprinkling a few excerpts on the various reels of bathing, water games, gatherings, naps, catteries and leisure. All glued back together.

Unfortunately almost all the short films shot by this anonymous amateur are silent, I brought back some ambient sounds and tried not to be too bothered by the background noise of the projector (or the camera?). Only a short, rather moving moment could be saved, during which his words can be heard.

When do these images date? Difficult to determine, but apart from the technical considerations of small amateur films such as 8 or super 8 mm, at least from the mid-60s, at a time when love was still a feeling that a man and a woman could experience together, and which made it possible for her to give herself in this beautiful innocence, not devoid of seduction, and that he could be fascinated by her, spend a substantial part of his time filming her (in a slightly fetishistic relationship?). The viewer will therefore forgive the poor state of conservation of the images, flickers, false seams, scratches and dust, grain, etc.

There are still a lot of mysteries surrounding these reels: why does the image overflow the Super 8 frame? Do the shots of this young woman immersing herself in a bathtub date from the same period, were they shot with the same equipment, their format not being identical? Does the letter found really have anything to do with the images, and what was probably an affair with this woman, or none?