The idea for this film comes from a photo that I took with my mobile phone, when going home with the first underground train at dawn after Saint-Antoine’s night on 13th June. Rather than people, the metro transported exhausted, sleeping bodies, which woke up as if by instinct when they arrived at their stop. They went out walking mechanically, always with the same rhythm and always silent. Without saying goodbye, as if they were each one alone. I got off at my usual stop. I went towards the exit, walking behind a group of girls and boys. When I got outside, I looked at the other metro exits. From each one, boys and girls were coming out, all walking in the same way, in silence, in a still sleeping city. Already, in the street they followed their path home, mechanically, with an alcoholic rhythm which struck me as eminently choreographic.
It made one inevitably think of the geometric choreographies of Buster Keaton or Jacques Tati and, why not, of the pieces by Pina Bausch. I thought of a gigantic choreography in honour of Saint-Antoine, a sort of unconscious pagan tribute to one of the most popular celebrations in Lisbon.