by Ramona POENARU
2023 - 64 min - HD
With the support of the DRAC Grand Est and the Grand Est Region.
Director : Ramona Poenaru
Image : Aïdan Obrist, Ramona Poenaru
Sound : Grégory Pernet, Vivien Roche
Image editing : Ramona Peonaru, Eleonore Greif
Sound mix : Grégory Pernet
Production : Milana Christitch
SYNOPSIS
Sainte-Marie-aux-Mines, in rural Alsace. A vocational high school.
A class of 11th-grade ASSP (Personal Care and Services) students is experiencing contemporary dance based on contact improvisation for the first time. For one semester, a dance company guides them through this discovery. Between professional classes where they learn how to care for the body and dance workshops grounded in contact, the teenagers will undergo a unique physical experience that will open paths to self-awareness and an understanding of others. The film gives them a voice and a visual presence, following this journey from their perspective.
THE DIRECTOR
A mixed-media artist, Ramona Poenaru was born in Romania and has lived in France since 1995.
She creates multimedia installations and performances, and directs films, music videos, dance videos, and video projections. Her artistic work is a continuous attempt to define her place as a human being in the world, in an existential, aesthetic, and political sense.
Since 2005, she has been collaborating with musicians, choreographers, and directors on multimedia performances in France and internationally (Cie Dégadézo Strasbourg – France, Cie L’Astrolabe Strasbourg – France, Acousmania Bucharest, Interart Bucharest – New York, Budapest, Stuttgart / Konk Pack – London, Nancy / Ozma – France, Germany, etc.).
In 2012, she founded the company Des châteaux en l'air with Gaël Chaillat, which explores the role of the audience in engaging with a work. Together, they have launched numerous projects that draw on architecture, anthropology, literature, and ecology, presenting them in France, Germany, Romania, Slovakia, Hungary, Serbia, Iran, India, and Bangladesh. In 2021, they took a boat trip on the Danube, from which they created an interactive multimedia performance to be experienced with one’s feet in the water—Danubia—which they have since performed in France and across Europe.
As a filmmaker, Ramona Poenaru directed *Dor* (Nostalgia), a docu-fiction about the impossible return from exile, shot on 16mm and produced by Deuxième Souffle Strasbourg & Le Fresnoy (35 min, 2008), which was screened at several festivals and exhibitions in France and Belgium (Pantin, Corsica.doc, FATP, Temps d’Images, Videos Europa). That same year, following a residency in the Bois Blancs neighborhood of Lille, she directed *Je suis de ce lieu*, a portrait film produced by CABB Lille & Le Fresnoy, shown at CABB Lille, Le Fresnoy, and at various exhibitions and festivals. The two films were compiled in 2011 into a monographic DVD published by Ecarts Production titled Tribulations.
Ramona Poenaru discovered dance and developed a passion for contact improvisation during Mark Tompkins’ residency at Pôle-Sud Strasbourg at the end of the last millennium. Subsequently, the Dégadézo Company / Antje Schur & Régine Westenhoeffer, who carried on this practice in Strasbourg and beyond, invited her to participate as a videographer in numerous projects involving performances, installations, workshops, and residencies. Their piece “Contactfull” served as the starting point for the film “Touché.”
