Sébastien Lifshitz L’Inventaire Infini

Since the end of the 1990's, Sébastien Lifshitz has been building up a cinematographic body of work that is delicate and political in equal measure. In conjunction with the cinema release of his latest film, Adolescentes, the Centre Pompidou looks back over the different aspects of his work. A major collector himself, it will also be presenting a unique exhibition of vernacular photographs.

Whether it be a smile, hands, or a look, Sébastien Lifshitz, the École du Louvre-trained film maker, has made his mark, since Les Corps ouverts, his first medium-length film, in 1998, as an extraordinary maker of portraits who is committed to the intimacy of detail. With Bambi in the film of the same name (2013), Thérèse Clerc in Les Vies de Thérèse (2016), but also the artist Valérie Mréjen in Il faut que je l’aime (1994), and the film-maker Claire Denis in Claire Denis, la vagabonde (1995), Lifshitz brings to the screen a community of a joyous, profound, resolutely outward-facing nature. In the course of his ten films to date, ranging from fiction-based feature films to documentaries in a variety of formats, he probes deep into the dimensions of gender and the plurality of our individual identities, as in 2012 with Les Invisibles, which earned him a Cesar for best documentary.
Sébastien Lifshitz’s passionate interest in amateur photography began as a child during his regular visits to flea-markets, which invariably resulted in compulsive purchases of bundles of photographs. Here, in parallel with the retrospective of his films, he presents the exhibition L’Inventaire Infini. Serving as a subjective anthology of vernacular photography, this bringing together of 400 pieces will be the occasion for Sébastien Lifshitz to reveal an intimate part of his artistic education.