Experiencing Interruptions?

Gravity

A man slowly crosses the frame in front of four large paintings by Xie Lei, where bodies appear suspended in a monochromatic green fall.
His heavy presence moves among these floating figures, bringing the weight of the living body into the image.
Between the painted bodies and the walking figure, gravity itself becomes visible.

  • Christophe Schaeffer
    Director
  • Christophe Schaeffer
    Writer
  • Christophe Schaeffer
    Producer
  • Project Title (Original Language):
    Gravité
  • Project Type:
    Experimental
  • Runtime:
    4 minutes 30 seconds
  • Country of Origin:
    France
  • Country of Filming:
    France
  • Shooting Format:
    Digital 4K
  • Aspect Ratio:
    16:9
  • Film Color:
    Black & White and Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    No
  • Student Project:
    No
Director Biography - Christophe Schaeffer

Christophe Schaeffer is a French multidisciplinary artist — writer, poet, philosopher (PhD), visual artist, and lighting designer. His work spans theatre, contemporary dance, visual arts, music, and cinema, exploring perception, time, and the fragile boundaries between image and presence.
Since 2022, he has developed a body of experimental films extending his research into moving images. His cinematic practice revolves around duration, slowness, and the vibration of reality, often using extreme slow motion, long focal lengths, and mobile phone cinematography.
His films have been presented in international festivals and artistic contexts, and pursue a form of poetic cinema of attention, where images remain inhabited by gesture, silence, and lived experience.

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Director Statement

Gravity begins with a simple gesture: a man slowly crossing the frame in front of four large paintings by Xie Lei. In these paintings, bodies appear suspended in a monochromatic green space, as if caught in an endless fall.
The walk unfolds at an extremely slow pace, close to the slow discipline of butō. Nothing happens except this gradual passage from one side of the image to the other. Time stretches, and the weight of the body becomes perceptible in every step.
What interested me was the tension between two kinds of bodies: the living body subjected to gravity, and the painted figures frozen in a suspended fall. The man’s grey silhouette confronts these images, creating an image within the image.
The improvisation by Herb Elsky accompanies this crossing with sparse metallic resonances. Rather than illustrating the movement, it opens a space of listening and attention.
Little by little, the walk ceases to be a simple movement through space. It becomes an experience of gravity itself — the weight of bodies, their fragility, and the effort required simply to remain.