The 2022 Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival poster is out!

21 September 2021

Festival

Let’s get the party (re)started!

L’artiste pose avec son œuvre / The artist and his masterpiece © SQPLCM, Camille Dampierre

“This drawing shows first of all what we missed the most: not only discovering new films, but to do so in the company of thousands of new people for us to meet.”

These are the words of Brecht Evens, the Belgian illustrator who designed the 2022 poster for the 44th Clermont-Ferrand Short Film Festival. Master of the paradoxical perspective and equipped with an explosive palette, this night-time poet with his distinctive style projects in this poster his fantasized vision of the festival, conceived while roaming the half-deserted streets of Clermont-Ferrand last February. If the architecture and secret corners of the city explored by the light of magic lanterns inspired him, so did the accounts of the movie fans desperate to find themselves in front of the big screen once again. This Babelian, festive, luminous and exciting fantasy town represents all possibilities, infused with the breath of festival life.

Let’s face it, this unusual year was a difficult one and the hiatus was painful. Even if we managed to offer an online version of the festival, we missed our audiences terribly. The joyous prospect of seeing you all once again to celebrate together the greatness of short film is our driving force.

In the middle of this labyrinthine urban jungle – which resembles the frantic racing of our avid cinephiles in the halls of the Maison de la Culture – joy is celebrated at every level. The festival that will fill us with life from the 28 January to 5 February 2022 will be overlooked by the Moon, for which the film directors in our competition will be reaching. All the curved perspectives of this poster lead us there, the spires of the cathedral converge there, in a dialectically subtle to-and-fro. Everything originates there: it is well known that “to be over the Moon” means to be full of joy. The fountain, sealed with cobblestones, appears to be the terrestrial reflection of this celestial body of the night. From this point of view, the fountain becomes the central element of the party, a well of stories to which festival-goers and night-owls go to drink.

And there will be no lack of stories. Despite the pandemic, the lockdowns, and successive curfews, the world continued to turn and the cameras continued to roll. We can’t wait to share with you the tales and adventures straight out of the minds of film makers from all over the world, in tune with the city that will vibrate again to the rhythm of our hearts.

In each and every language, we’ll be transported!

Brecht Evens introduces the poster

Who are you, Brecht Evens ?

Shooting in situ au jardin Lecoq (Clermont-Ferrand, février 2021) © SQPLCM, Baptiste Chanat

Born in Hasselt in 1986, Brecht Evens was 22 years old when he graduated from the Saint-Luc Fine Arts School in Ghent (Belgium) with The Wrong Place, his graduation project. His inimitable style, characterized by a remarkable mastery of color and transparency, bursting perspectives and a taste for detail, immediately aroused enthusiasm. Published in 2010, The Wrong Place won the Prix de L’Audace at the Angoulême International Comics Festival. With the release of The Making Of (2011) and Panther (2014), Brecht Evens’ notoriety continued to grow in France, where he now lives, as well as abroad, and today extends far beyond the borders of the world of comics.

In 2018, he published The City of Belgium, an impressive graphic novel of more than 300 pages, which recounts the wanderings of three night owls in a chimerical and sublime city, a comic strip composed of tan shades set to the rhythm of a sequence of shimmering drawings. For this comic, Brecht Evens received the Fauve – Special Jury Prize at the 2019 Angoulême International Comics Festival.

Brecht Evens invents a pictorial language through textures and layers of materials as diverse as watercolor, gouache, Indian ink and pencil. He works in both small and large formats that are full of detail, trompe-l’oeil and other false perspectives and is imbued with a strong color dynamic. The work of Brecht Evens is a fertile chaos where reality mingles with the fantastic. A playground and a living space, both fluid and opaque, where softness fuels violence, enchantment, and nightmare.

When he’s between books, Brecht Evens works for the press, the fashion industry, and is represented by the Martel Gallery in Paris. His graphic novels are published by Drawn & Quarterly.

He succeeds Yuko Shimizu of Japan in the creation of the festival poster.

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