Festival Rio Loco - Les Balkans

PHOTOGRAPHS

The piano, practised assiduously for six years at the Sofia school of music, wasn't able to keep her.  Finally, Eva Kristeva decided that her vocation lay in photography and painting.  The photos of this young artist, who is now based in France, offer bare urban landscapes, and portraits without artifice which allow the naked truth of emotion to filter through.

Free entry

 

EXHIBITION "CHEMIN DE LA PLAGE À LA CITÉ"

Photographs, text and sound by Sara JABBAR-ALLEN, presented by Alter Image

French-Iraqi by birth, Sara spent her early years in Kuwait, before moving to France in 1971, where she decided to focus on documentary photography.  The visual and audio project presented here is a tender, lucid testimony to a gypsy community which has chosen to settle in Toulouse.

Saturday 7 June at 15:30 - presentation of the exhibition by the artist 

Free entry

EXHIBITION

A cinematographic journey through this exhibition of posters from films from the Balkans

A partnership between the Cinémathèque de Toulouse and the Rio Loco Festival

Free entry

PAINTINGS  - BARRIO LOCO

She was only three years old when she left Macedonia (in the former Yugoslavia).  So you won't find any reminiscences in her paintings, nor painful expressions of exile, but instead the signs of a strong attachment to light and to the colours of her native soil.  Beneath these warm, welcoming hues lies a gesture of love to the home of her earliest years.

 Free entry

 

PHOTOGRAPHY "NOIR SUR BLANC" / INSTALLATION "L'ALPHABET DES LEVRES" - BARRIO LOCO

When we speak, our lips adopt a myriad of different positions, forming a strange and unique alphabet.  An invisible language of sentiments, intimate and instinctive, according to Laura Todoran. This Serb artist has used this exhibition to devise her own utopia: the idea of writing without letters, and thus a language which is universally understood.  As well as her lip alphabet ("l'alphabet des lèvres"), an interactive space where the visitor can try out this vocabulary, the artist is proposing as a counterpoint a photography study in black and white ("noir sur blanc"), a new adaptation of the Babel myth about the lack of understanding between peoples speaking different languages

Work in progress Tuesday 10, Wednesday 11 and Thursday 12 June

An encounter with Laura Todoran where visitors can come and discover her world and her ongoing projects. The three works produced during these public workshops will be exhibited in the Prairie des Filtres during the festival.

Free entry

EXHIBITION - BARRIO LOCO

The Hellenic world has created an infinite variety of clothing styles.  In popular, traditional or national costumes, characteristic details distinguish such things as regional variations, social status, major events in the life of the wearer, as well as local festivals.  Greece's geographical position further multiplies the abundance of local cultures evident in the clothing, including Byzantine, Turkish and even Venetian influences.

Free entry

PHOTOGRAPHS - BARRIO LOCO

Captivated by the concept of 'elsewhere', he criss-crosses the world, camera lens at the ready. North America, Asia, various corners of Africa, Cuba ... One day his travels led him to Romania, a place that made an even more profound impression on him.  Over the next ten years, he returned several times, mingling with the country's Roma population.  His photos chronicle the most memorable encounters and moments from these visits.

Free entry

PHOTOGRAPHS

These photos were taken in the heart of Bucharest (Romania) in December 2006, on the buses and in the metro.  Behind the glass windows, the crowds, marked by their environment, parade on the public transport like models on a catwalk.
The aim of this piece was to show the expressions on these Romanian faces on the eve of them becoming citizens of the European Union on 1 January 2007, with a change of perception on the horizon.  This historic moment, which passed almost unnoticed in their everyday lives, will have a profound effect on this society in the longer term.

Free entry

PHOTOGRAPHS - BARRIO LOCO

His infatuation with photography began when he was a teenager.  With his Master in Anglo-American literature, Klavdij Sluban might have stayed an English teacher forever if his adolescent passion had faded.  But it didn't, and he is now photographer for life, or at least until something or somebody else comes and changes his destiny.  Although born in Paris, his childhood home Slovenia has always remained close to his heart, and he returned there in the 1980s to sample the delights of its countryside.  One day in 1993 on a Skopje street he bumped into the writer François Maspero.  For a while, the two men followed the same path together.  From their shared journey, a remarkable travel book was born, "Balkans-Transit" (published by Editions du Seuil).

Free entry

PHOTOGRAPHS - BARRIO LOCO

Through his portraits of anonymous men and women, captured going about their everyday lives, Brice Dirlès offers us a portrait of a new Romania. Ana, Dan, Gabriel, Alma, Wladimir, Carmen and Angelica tell the story of their country as it joins the modern world, en route to a future brimming with hope and uncertainty after becoming a member of the European Union on 1 January 2007.  

Musical preview Tuesday 17 June at 18:30 at the Espace Bonnefoy with: Duo Romano

The gypsy lifestyle provides the theme for the songs that inspire their repertoire.  The energy of a gypsy ball in Romania, the emotion of a wedding, the wonder of a journey, the blues of exile, and the joy of discovering new horizons…

Free entry

PAINTINGS

After starting with a few enigmatic splatters, just like any other child, Eva Kristeva really came into her own at the Academy of Fine Arts in Sofia.  Without neglecting her other areas of interest (photography and architecture) she took to painting with passionate enthusiasm.  Her brush soon began creating enigmatic portraits and populated landscapes.

8:30-18:00 (closed on Sunday)

Free entry