Contre, tout contre
2010 · 6m · Belgique
Directed by Yoann Stehr
Genres: essay film, experimental
Tones: contemplative, darkly comic, provocative
Built from manipulated images of cult cinema and newsreels, this found-footage short lays bare the solitude hidden behind the glitter of movie celebrity.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Found-footage essay films about celebrity solitude are exactly the kind of thing film Twitter thinks is profound, but Stehr actually does something perverse here—treating archival material like a palimpsest of cultural delusion rather than earnest deconstruction, which is infinitely more interesting.
The formal intelligence of collaging cult cinema and newsreels into a meditation on celebrity's hollow core places this squarely in the lineage of Godard's essayistic montage, and the restraint of its 6-minute duration demonstrates real curatorial discipline—every image earns its place.
The singular choice here is the *rhythm* of juxtaposition—how Stehr lets images breathe against each other rather than stack them, so the solitude becomes tactile rather than conceptual, which is what elevates it beyond academic collage into something that actually feels.
Reviews
La forme y est littéralement au service du contenu et est traitée avec une réelle ingéniosité. Montrer le gouffre illusoire de la célébrité dans le milieu des strasses et paillettes du septième art en une surabondance d'images laisse entrevoir la terrible solitude qui lui fait écho.