ALUMNI PORTRAIT 3

Alix Ménard

Promo #1

Project: Imperceptibles

interviewed on 05/02/2024

Can you introduce yourself in a few words?

After a course in town planning and at La Fémis, I began my conversion to exhibition at Etoile Cinémas and the CIP as an administrator. It was then that I joined the first Futura Cinema class with podcast projects and eventually co-created a simultaneous secret film festival in Paris and Budapest called Imperceptibles.

I currently sit on the board of SCARE and I work for Première Cinémas, particularly on creating and coordinating mediators in our cinemas, setting up a CSR policy and cultural projects, as well as applying to manage Art et Essai cinemas under a public service contract.

What prompted you to take part in the Futura Cinema incubation programme?

Futura Cinema was launched shortly after the confinements, at a time when the industry was reflecting on the future of exhibition. For my part, as a director of the CIP, I was very concerned about the return of 15-25 year-olds to independent arthouse cinemas, and I had just launched the CIP lab with the association's management, where we worked together to develop projects for new practices in our cinemas. It seemed obvious to me to apply to Futura Cinéma, which perfectly matched my ideas, desires and needs for meetings and a framework to put them in place.

Did you have a project when you joined the programme? If so, how did the programme contribute to its development? 

For the first edition of the programme, I came up with a podcast project aimed at the 18-25 age group, but I had also suggested to a design student with whom I was tutoring his final dissertation and with whom I was discussing the perception of independent cinemas and a different kind of urban visibility for cinemas, that he should come along on the adventure.

Alongside Futura Cinéma, Robin (Pierre) and I worked a lot on this subject, right up to the creation of the Imperceptibles concept, at which point we considered applying for the Europa Cinemas-funded ‘Collaborate to innovate’ programme.

We were in the third stage of Futura Cinéma, and we decided to leave the Podcast project and concentrate on Imperceptibles, in order to use the meeting time to develop our concept more quickly, put it before the steering committee and make it ‘visible’ so as to increase our chances of finding funding.

This was the right choice, because our project was honed between the third stage in Annecy and the last in Les Arcs, and we were more ‘credible’ in obtaining our two grants, one from the CNC for its 15-25 call for projects and the other from ‘Collaborate to Innovate’.

Do you have a highlight to share from your incubator adventure?

Of course, the Les Arcs festival was the first Incubation for Imperceptibles. We did a lot of work on our final presentations with students, who gave us extremely valuable feedback from potential users, and their enthusiasm for the project carried us through our speeches to the jury and professionals. We felt very strongly that people were interested in our idea and in all the additions and partnerships we had made. The evening when we won the ‘Coup de Coeur’ award from the jury and the professionals was incredible for us. It helped us to get going and to legitimise ourselves, because there were only two of us to create such an event.

Today, has the project developed during the incubation year seen the light of day? What has it become?

Imperceptibles did indeed see the light of day in 2022, just a few months after its incubation, in the form of a film festival with secret evenings. There have been two editions in just one year: one simultaneously in Paris and Budapest and another in the autumn, a sort of French tour of the concept.

The films and locations are revealed through clues hidden in the festival towns, but also online and via an urban augmented reality trail. Everything about this festival is augmented, not just the communication and the spectator trail, but the screenings too, mixing performances (DragQueen, Burlesque Erotique, immersive theatre, Cartomancy, psychic shows, V JING etc.) and secret films. The evenings are themed, so there's a consistency in the clues, the tone used in the communication, the augmented reality games, the hiding places in the city, the performance preceding the film and the universe we create for that evening. So the social and artistic experience is at the heart of the innovation, not just the technological aspect.

Since then, Imperceptibles has become a tool for cinemas and festivals, as well as a catalogue of ‘alternative’ artists that we make available to cinemas. And for us it's been a rich professional experience that we use every day!