Yannick Lebtahi

Biography

Yannick Lebtahi is a semiologist, media analyst and documentary filmmaker. Her work focuses on cinema and television, as well as the image and its contemporary issues. A qualified lecturer in information and communication sciences at the University of Lille, she is a member of the Groupe d’études et de recherches interdisciplinaires en information et communication de Lille (GERIICO) laboratory and an associate member of the Centre d’étude sur les images et les sons médiatiques Paris3 (CEISME). She is scientific and editorial director of the journal Cahiers interdisciplinaires de la recherche en communication audiovisuelle (CIRCAV) and director of the DeVisu collection published by L’Harmattan.

Conference: Is an apocalypse possible?

The powerful imagery of Y2K – symbolizing chaos – gave rise to an innovative cinematographic production: ten films by ten young filmmakers from ten different countries, with the common constraint of including in their synopsis the night of December 31, 1999, so dreaded and fantasized for its planetary big bug. For France, in the manner of the Surrealists, filmmaker Laurent Cantet weaves metaphorical representations of time in abyss in his film Les Sanguinaires. The play on the notion of the screen pits the “objectified” time of this celebration refused by François, the main character, against the time he experiences in the face of his existential quest and his elusive spleen. Looking into the mirror of his fears and doubts, the viewer is projected into a hypothetical programmed end of the world, while witnessing the wreckage of François’ certainties and imagining the total erasure of individuality as the result of a possible apocalypse. As an overture, the film closes with an ambiguity about the future of the central character, sending the viewer back to his own condition, leading him to question the meaning of his existence, in its relationship to death.