The Étonnants Voyageurs festival explores “the present time” for its premiere without Michel Le Bris

Astonishing Voyageurs is preparing, despite the absence of the public and the disappearance of its founder Michel Le Bris, who died in January.

This 30th edition of the Saint-Malo International Book and Film Festival will take place in the presence of the authors, whose discussions will be broadcast live on the internet.

Mélani Le Bris, who was in charge of the programming of these three days with the theme

“The search for the present time”

, details the contours of an edition inhabited by the memory of his father.

Read also: Michel Le Bris, in the offshore wind

LE FIGARO.- What state of mind are you in as this edition of the festival approaches?

Mélani LE BRIS.

-

We are happy that this edition can exist for Michel [Le Bris].

The best tribute we can pay him is that this edition takes place since he was already planning it, and that it stirs up many questions that fascinated him.

I didn't know how I was going to react to the death of my father, but I quickly felt carried, with the desire to project myself into the festival that was coming.

I felt like I continued to engage with him, like we did when we were both imagining the lineup.

How do you prepare a festival in such an uncertain context?

Everyone was at a standstill with the pandemic and we were working not knowing if the event could take place.

Deciding that we had to mount this edition at all costs was good for the whole team.

We imagined a somewhat hybrid formula that looks like us.

While a lot has developed in digital since last year, I was opposed to the idea of ​​maintaining the festival at all costs.

A digital version went against the festival as we thought.

Astonishing Voyageurs, these are not just end-to-end debates over books.

We try to question the present tense.

Improvising things didn't seem coherent to me.

Michel Le Bris, founder of the festival, died on January 30, 2021. incent MULLER / Opale / Leemage

What format did you choose?

We decided to bring the authors physically to Saint-Malo.

To preserve the fluidity and intensity of a meeting, it seems important to me that people are physically together.

The authors seemed happy with this.

But there will be the frustration that the audience is not there.

In Saint-Malo, in a packed auditorium, with very intense debates, there is a kind of emulation which comes from the public and which carries the authors.

How do you convert to such a different format than usual?

It is a leap into the unknown and a real technical challenge to succeed in making these four simultaneous channels live on the internet.

We wanted to manage the recording ourselves so that it was lively and pleasant to watch.

I don't see it as a diminished festival but as a full-fledged experience that can help us find a new audience.

How did the theme of

"

finding the present time" come about

?

Everything we have experienced this year is worthy of a science fiction series. This upsets our relationship to time. We can no longer project ourselves into the future, which forces us to think of ourselves in the present, to look around us at what we no longer looked at. This experience puts us face to face with ourselves and is diffused in literature. Many books focus on our relationship to living things, to the environment. For example, Pierre Cassou-Noguès, the philosopher, calls on fiction to think about reality. I wanted to involve philosophers and scientists in the meetings, to make them dialogue with the novelists. The question of commitment will also be very present in the festival.Cédric Herrou will come and talk about his experience through his book

Change your world

.

The painting by Gustave Courbet

Palavas or The artist in front of the sea

evokes Le Bris

Le

Bris

The monk by the sea,

a work by Caspar David Friedrich that his father loved.

Bridgeman Pictures

Why did you choose this Gustave Courbet canvas as a poster?

It was while watching a documentary on romantic painting that I saw this image appear, which immediately reminded me of Caspar David Friedrich's painting

The Monk by the Sea

.

I had shown the documentary to Michel, who really liked this painter.

The monk by the sea

was also the cover of one of his books.

I found that the image of Gustave Courbet was a salute to the past and to romanticism, and something that is projected into the future.

It's both a goodbye to the past and a hello to the future, and it corresponded well to what we wanted to develop through the festival.

Are you going to pay tribute to Michel Le Bris?

Hot tributes are always complicated, and I didn't want anything tearful.

The idea was for Michel to accompany all the meetings that will take place and are related to themes that were dear to him.

I chose a few excerpts and quotes that will punctuate the meetings, allowing everyone to freely evoke memories.

How to organize a festival dedicated to travel when travel is prohibited?

The trip is not just a tourist trip to exotic countries.

There is also the journey in oneself, in the imagination and reverie.

There is also the voyage in the stars, which will speak to us the astrophysicists who will intervene during the festival.

At the beginning, the festival was very open to traveling writers and little by little, we opened it up to many other areas.

For me, the festival is a journey into literature and the imagination.

How did Michel Le Bris look at the health crisis?

He was passionate about questions about the present times, about the relationship to commitment, to living things, to ourselves.

There is something hallucinatory about this pandemic: it affects the whole world simultaneously.

It brings us back to essential questions.

For example, what is the foundation of our common humanity?

These are questions that fascinated Michel and which we discussed a lot during this period.

And this edition of the festival is for me an extension of everything we have experienced in recent months.

Étonnants Voyageurs, to be followed on May 22, 23 and 24 via the

festival

website

.