Simon
A man prepares for his final entry onto the grand stage, only to be confronted by his inner self. SIMON is a genre-crossing, dizzying dive; an inside-outside passage through dance. Passage from the imaginary to the reality, from childhood to adulthood. No one is more alone than the actor who enters the stage. No one is more alone than the child who’s about to join adulthood. And when the imaginary joins reality, the figure of childhood explodes.
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Camille de GalbertDirector
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Camille de GalbertWriter
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Thibaut EstellonProducer
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Michael BelcherDirector of Photography
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Chris ShimojimaEditor
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Frank BaranProduction Designer
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Haruka KawasumiArt Director
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Jevyn NelmsCostume Designer
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Rachel HevesiHair and Make-up Artist
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Rick Rosset1st Assistant Director
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Bohdan BushellSpecial Effects Supervisor
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Rob FattoriniGaffer
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Bob BlankemeierGaffer
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Kyle Clark1st Assistant Camera
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Brandon SumnerCrane Operator
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Ryan GeffertSwing
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Andrew ReardonLocation Sound
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Bob BlankemeierStunt Double
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Bastian (dog)Animals
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Maricela ReyesProduction Coordinator
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John LudasProduction Assistants
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Erick MajanoProduction Assistants
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Anne-Sophie TisseyreAdministrative Assistant
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Vincent RodriguezArt Production Assistant
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Erick MajanoBehind the Scenes Photographer
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Nicholas LevantiColorist
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Jay GarrisonVFX artist
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Steven TollenSound Executive Producer
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Kevin PetersSound Design and Sound Mix
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Robert SyvretAdditional Sound Editorial
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Marion BizetPoster and Titles Design
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Project Type:Short
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Genres:Experimental, Drama
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Runtime:11 minutes 58 seconds
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Completion Date:June 10, 2015
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Production Budget:25,000 USD
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Country of Origin:United States
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Country of Filming:United States
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Shooting Format:Red
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Aspect Ratio:2:40
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Film Color:Color
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First-time Filmmaker:Yes
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Student Project:No
Camille de Galbert is a graduate of the Conservatoire National de Région de Grenoble, France, in contemporary dance (2000). She continued her dance training in New York at The Merce Cunningham Studio. As a result of a knee injury, she renounced a dance career and turned her artistic attention to drawing and video projects as a self-taught artist. She then applied her interests to cinema and moving image techniques at the NY Film Academy.
Camille de Galbert’s art is at the crossroad of multiple disciplines.
Her works on paper are direct and objective extensions of her life; they are not comments, observations, or judgments; they are remnants of the archeology of her past and spirit. While her videos offer ethereal ideas of her spirit, these works on paper offer material testimonies of her actions. In these pieces, her creative intention finds its form in an object with weight, a time, and a place.
Through the years Camille’s craft has grown to blend moving images into a choreography of light, music, and words. She carries-out experimental videos impregnated with the unconscious, the oneiric, her journey as a dancer, as well as her life in the United States, where movements, expressions, sounds, shapes, and faces collide.
SIMON is a genre-crossing, dizzying dive; an inside-outside passage through dance. Passage from the imaginary to the real, from childhood to adulthood. SIMON is therefore an inevitable redemption: a meditation, the initiation ritual of a character who faces his own accidents. The body is inhabited by the constant movement of the imbalance into the fall. The gloves drop, multiply, pour, and fall. Hackneyed gestures, infinite shifts from the body. From the camera. From the inside outwards. Incessant inside & outside. An actor prepares for his final entry onto the grand stage. We follow him on his inner journey, from the dressing room to the stage.
The opening scene is a tribute to Pina Bausch. The dark chairs draw on the floor as human shadows. These chairs are us; our humanity, our fragility, our clashes, our excesses. The man falls, gets up, falls again. The man dances with his own life, with his desires and surprises. He dances with the elements, with his fears and inner impulses.
Music is the central axis of my work. It is my primary source of inspiration. It is the music that sets my creative process in motion and gives it its rhythm.
The figure of childhood appears through the character of the little dog. This dog is the benevolent soul, the reassuring angel that accompanies us and who we care for. And the rampart to solitude, or to the sense of abandonment.
Here is the pillow that consoles. Feathers, flakes. It is also the animalistic part of the dancer who rises and falls, gets up, and finally stands up to face his own life.
No one is more alone than the actor who enters the stage. No one is more alone than the child who’s about to join adulthood. And when the imaginary joins reality, the figure of childhood explodes.