Crowd depicts a rave party where young people encounter strong emotional experiences. There are several layers in the piece, but one major layer is the narratives… We have fifteen young people on stage who create this gallery of personal portraits. It’s an emotional rollercoaster, which talks about love, desire, violence and loneliness, and many contradictory emotions. It also deals with the question of how these emotions are shared and “communicated” in a social setting.

Crowd also questions the need for contemporary rituals or the need to reinvent rituals in contemporary culture… [It’s] about how time is perceived or distorted through our emotions. One of the beautiful challenges in this piece was executing the “retouched” movements—slow, cut out loops that are inspired by special effects or movie editing techniques—which was a great technical challenge. But it is not about “imitating” these retouched movements, it is about finding a way to perform them in a very sensitive, very organic and personal way. — Gisèle Vienne

IF IT WERE LOVE / SI C’ÉTAIT DE L’AMOUR—an immersive look at choreographer Gisèle Vienne’s Crowd by filmmaker Patric Chiha—is “a dream based on a performance,” according to its director.

The film, which won the 2020 Teddy for best documentary at the 70th Berlin International Film Festival, is streaming now at 2020 Outfest Los Angeles. See link below for details.

IF IT WERE LOVE / SI C’ÉTAIT DE L’AMOUR

2020 Outfest Los Angeles

Available through Monday, August 24, until 11:59 pm.

Patric Chiha, If It Were Love / Si c’était de l’amour (2020). Crowd choreographer Gisèle Vienne in third, eighth, and sixteenth photograph from the top. Images courtesy and © the filmmaker, the choreographer, the dancers, and Aurora Films.