La Ferme du Buisson's Art Centre will present Roberto Rossellini's last film SoixanteDixSept (SeventySeven): When Rossellini filmed the Centre Pompidou dedicated to the opening of the Centre Pompidou in 1977. 

In 1977, Roberto Rossellini devoted his last film to the opening of the Centre Pompidou, as personal testimony to the advent of a new artistic, architectural and cultural modernity. Now, after forty years of neglect, his film has resurfaced. The Italian director approached the museum in a way nobody else ever has, catching spectators' stunned amazement on the spot. 

This extraordinary adventure is revealed by hitherto unshown archives from the film's producer Jacques Grandclaude and Marie Auvity's documentary account of its making. In response to this remarkable material, works by Brion Gysin, Gordon Matta- Clark and Melvin Moti from the Centre Pompidou collection offer subjective visions of the museum and its history.

Dorothea Tanning Chambre 202, Hôtel du Pavot, 1970. Image © The Estate of Dorothea Tanning / Adagp, Paris

The brand new Centre Pompidou opened in 1977, offering the public its first taste of Contemporary art. Roberto Rossellini devoted his last film to this historic moment. In doing so he testified to the advent of a new artistic, architectural and cultural modernity. With a camera constantly on the move and an amazing system of hidden microphones, he filmed the museum in a way nobody else ever has, catching spectators' stunned amazement on the spot.

Rarely screened over these last 40 years, this remarkable work has been made the beating heart of the exhibition. It is accompanied by hitherto unshown archival material from producer and comrade in arms Jacques Grandclaude: a step by step video montage of the director at work, 2500 photographs of the shoot, and hours of sync rushes recorded with Rossellini's hidden microphones. This immersive experience of the Italian master's method and the Centre Pompidou's first days is revisited here in a film specially made for the exhibition, in which Marie Auvity gets the original crew to talk about the making of the Rossellini film and its relationship with the Pompidou's creative spirit.

Out of this presentation arises the issue of how we see the museum and what it produces: its mix of democratisation and mass culture, and the invention of a new kind of visitor, a new form of museography and a new relationship with society. What kind of memory lives on in museums, and what projections, critiques and reshapings is it subject to?

Pompidou Centre featured in World Architecture Community's video series -BIG Projects In Paris (Part 1) as well as Orsay Station by Victor Laloux,  Bastille Opera House by Carlos Ott and Louvre Museum by I.M. Pei. All video series can be watched in World Architecture Community's Video page. 

In response to Rossellini's objective approach, works from the Centre Pompidou provide resolutely subjective artistic visions. When the Italian was filming, Brion Gysin was investing his photographs of the facade with his private hallucinations and Gordon Matta-Clark had already used the building site for Conical Intersect, his most famous social/ architectural work. When the Italian was filming, Melvin Moti was being born, and thirty years later he came up with No Show, a recreation of a guided tour of a museum containing no artworks. A "performance" made, he said, for the future, "a future we're not even ready for yet." Just as we weren't ready for those baffling objects, the Centre Pompidou and Rossellini's film.

In 2017, the Centre Pompidou is celebrating its 40th anniversary throughout France. To share the celebration with a wider audience, it will be presenting a completely new programme of exhibitions, outstanding loans and various events throughout the year.

Three exhibitions for the Centre Pompidou's 40th anniversary will be displayed from 11 March to 16 july 2017. 

SoixanteDixSept (SeventySeven)—The Project
In the framework of Centre Pompidou's 40th anniversary celebration throughout France, three key contemporary art venues in Seine-et-Marne, France’s département no. 77, recall the emblematic date—1977—of the opening of the Centre Pompidou, that "power plant for decentralisation," and renew the spirit of an era on a broad territorial scale.

–Ferme du Buisson Centre for Contemporary Art – Noisiel / When Rossellini filmed the Centre Pompidou
–Île-de-France Regional Contemporary Art Collection, (FRAC), le château/Parc culturel de Rentilly-Michel Chartier –Bussy-Saint-Martin / Hôtel du Pavot...
–Centre Photographique d’Île-de-France – Pontault-Combault / Experiment

The Pompidou Centre recently received €100 million for a two-year long facelift, which will be renovated by Renzo Piano Building Workshop (RPBW). 

Top image: Roberto Rossellini, shoot of the Centre Georges Pompidou 1977. Courtesy Fondation Genesium, Jacques Grandclaude. Image © d.r.

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