Experiencing Interruptions?

Le ventilateur

An elderly couple sits facing each other in a restaurant, silently sharing a meal.

  • Christophe Schaeffer
    Director
  • Christophe Schaeffer
    Writer
  • Christophe Schaeffer
    Producer
  • Schaeffer
    Key Cast
  • Project Type:
    Experimental
  • Runtime:
    4 minutes 53 seconds
  • Country of Origin:
    France
  • Country of Filming:
    Italy
  • Shooting Format:
    Digital 1920x1080
  • 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

Ventilateur unfolds in an ordinary setting: a restaurant where an elderly couple shares a quiet dinner. They sit facing each other, saying nothing. The atmosphere is warm, almost intimate.
Above them, a ceiling fan turns slowly. Its steady mechanical rhythm fills the room. Gradually, the image of the fan begins to transform: the rotating blades resemble a small sun, or perhaps an eye observing the scene from above.
What interested me was this shift of perception. A simple everyday object becomes the silent center of the image, introducing a quiet tension between the intimacy of the couple and the hypnotic movement overhead.
Between silence, repetition, and the gentle warmth of the restaurant, the film drifts toward a space where the ordinary opens onto something more enigmatic.