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THE WASTE LAND
The_waste_land_affiche002.jpgfiction, 35mm, black and white, 89' – 1987 / 1989



First Award - International Young Directors’ Film Festival, Belfort 1987


International Film Festival Cannes 1988 - Perspectives du Cinéma Français

International Film Festival Mannheim 1988






synopsis


The Waste Land, the desert land. "Between memory and desire…" (T.S. Eliot)..

The Waste Land tells the story of Sara, a girl of greek descent, who lives in a small village on the French Atlantic coast and dreams of travelling to the country of her ancestors. It tells the story of her love for Simon, a young theater manager in Paris. And it tells the story of her friends: Anne who plays the role of a sad king (on stage as well as in life) and her jester Jean-Claude. They're inseparable friends even if (or because) they love the same boys. Last but not least there is Pierre, a composer of contemporary music.

Filmed in black and white, The Waste Land tells the story of their wanderings between modern suburbs and ancient ruins.

 


The_waste_land_photomontage_small.jpg



The Waste Land is like a voyage into a suspended world and its frail but breathtaking poetry uncovers a rare and undiscovered horizon in French cinema.­

Frédéric Strauss, CAHIERS DU CINEMA
1 / 1988



An actress with lunar violence : Anne Leroy. There is true poetry and the film composes a very beautiful, visual melody…

Frédéric Strauss, CAHIERS DU CINEMA
6 / 1988

 

The Waste Land doesn't amount to its screenplay only. Before the story, there are the characters, its material texture, the space… The texture is a black and white of the origins. The space is divided into grey seashores, ghostly nights in Paris, greek landscapes pictured like a desert. Timon Koulmasis has this precious gift to render the sensation of a place in just a few shots

...

Timon Koulmasis films a succession of moments rather than a continuous story. We find ourselves in the domain of the fragmentary which means that the space between the sequences are as important as the sequences themselves, that the void and gaps play an important part in the film. Empty frames, black images, silence, irrational breaks –ways indicating cinematographic modernity- are used to introduce discontinuity. So, in The Waste Land editing has a central role since it puts in order the apparent disorder of the images. An extremely ambitous challenge…

This abstraction obliged Timon Koulmasis to create an invisible but palpable link between the images and, at the same time, to give every image, every shot, every sequence radiance and brightness enoug to let it exist by itself. Eventually the formal pattern that underlies The Waste Land is to be found in music.

...

Moments of grace punctuate the film. Timon Koulmasis was looking for the flash of fascination. He sometimes found it in a close-up of Anna Achdian or Anne Leroy, a deserted frame in Greece or on the Northern seashore. In these fragments, that's where the poetry of The Waste Land lies

 

Thierry Jousse, CAHIERS DU CINEMA
1 / 1989



The Waste Land takes off to unusal shores. Timon Koulmasis signs his first feature film like a photographer who has never touched a camera but discovers immediately the optimal settings.

LE FILM FRANÇAIS, 15/5/1988

 

Timon Koulmasis' first feature film can't be described. It works with impressions and obsessions. Its characters feel they do not belong to the world they live in. Absolute minded men and women, on the road whenever possible, fighting solitude by artistic creation.

Jacques Siclier, LE MONDE
25/1/1989


Beautiful black and white photography … a refined, pure, ambitious cinema. If there is an emblematic film of the new generation, it is The Waste Land.
LA CROIX, 1/12/1987



Anna Achdian is wonderful.
LIBERATION




the_waste_land_sara-lunettes-small.jpg
starring   Anna Achdian , Anne Leroy, Pierre Aussedat
    Jérôme Keen, Gilles Lotthé
     
writer, director
  Timon Koulmasis
photography
  Florent Montcouquiol
sound
  Philippe Donnefort, Pascal Desprès
editor
  Aurique Delannoy
composer
  Charlie Henn
assistant director
  Fabrice Puchault
producer 
  Timon Koulmasis




 
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