La Roche-sur-Yon: Virgile Gémonet films the “Street art” collective Ars Muralis

White wall, silent people traces part of the history of the La Roche-sur-Yon street art collective, Ars Muralis, from 2012 to 2022, through archive images, interviews, little-known moments in their history, actions outside of their city.

You can portraits drawn in relation to current eventspersonalities of the city, their beginnings, humorous diversions et an evolution designed towards a commitment which highlights our contemporary society.

This film is the memory of a collective in perpetual artistic evolution which sticks, displays, engages and shows us what we no longer see.

Keeping track of the street art collective

Since 2018, the director has followed the collective.

“I wanted to keep track of these gluers,” summarizes Virgile Gémonet, who followed the artists of the Formula 1 project, a hotel doomed to destruction and having hosted around sixty artists, until the action at Les Halles after the Covid-19, which raised the question of artists in La Roche-sur-Yon through nocturnal or daytime collages, drawing times in the studio…

The film is constructed in nine parts with actions unknown to the public.

Initially, I did not want to make a film, only to keep a trace of this collective which is both invisible and visible on the walls of the city.

And then the Ars Muralis collective’s project to release a board game, Lord of Graf, this summer, accelerated the film project. “I thought it was time to show these pictures!” […]»

Shown at the Arts et Essais label Le Concorde cinema, the film will be screened to the public on Thursday July 4 during a special evening on Street art.

A multi-card artist

Virgile Gémonet, photographer and visual artist, is a cultural actor in La Roche-sur-Yon.

For a dozen years, with the Nejma Company, he has carried out projects around the visual arts for residents of neighborhoods, rural areas, in detention, in hospitals, using photography, speech, street arts.

A desire to collect memory, keep a trace and build a bridge between the public and culture.

After fifteen years in the street arts and ten years of territorial projects, Virgile Gémonet began a career as a director which will link his experiences in the image, the collection of words, the artistic and the memory.

A self-taught director

Since 2019, he films as an autodidact and produces his first feature-length documentary, Suddenly always, about the Loire artist Guillaume Cousin. This film was screened at the La Roche-sur-Yon International Film Festival and continues its journey abroad.

White wall, silent people is a special project since it was not planned to make a feature film, but to keep a trace of the Ars Muralis collective.

“There is a work of archival research and narrative creation that I find particularly exciting,” explains Virgile Gémonet.

From photographs to interviews, the Yonnais collective explains its approach, its choices, its actions in this new documentary.

Thursday July 4, 2024 at the Le Concorde cinema in La Roche-sur-Yon: 6:30 p.m. screening of the film White walls, silent people, by Virgile Gémonet. 7:30 p.m.: opening of an exhibition and presentation of the game Lord of Graf d’Ars Muralis. 9 p.m.: Do Banksy’s wall.

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