This year Jaeger-LeCoultre supports the work of the young and talented Swiss filmmaker Eileen Hofer. Always a keen cinema fan, she decided to devote herself to filmmaking in 2008 and directed several shorts and full-length movies. These were shown at international film festivals like Rotterdam, Solothurn, Locarno, and Karlovy Vary, where they picked up dozens of prizes. From then on, Eileen’s travels and encounters became both her school of life and her film school.
The idea for her exhibition « Tomorrow the birds will sing » came to Hofer during her travels to the four corners of the globe. Whether on a ship sailing down China’s Yangtze River, on a starry night by the Ngorongoro crater in Tanzania, or during a family celebration in the Baku suburbs, Eileen Hofer came to realise that wherever she went, Charlie Chaplin triggered unanimous emotions. He was a comedian with universal appeal who spread timeless values.
Charlie Chaplin taught Eileen to cry, to laugh, to sigh. He showed her the beauty of a gesture, the precision of a word – even a silent one. She learned goodwill from Chaplin, but above all to believe in herself and in each individual. Chaplin taught her to live in the present, to see the glass as half full, to share, to invent, to create, to keep things in perspective, to find beauty in the absurd. He showed her the child being born and the projector in a movie theatre darkening on a wrinkled face. He makes fun of mediocrity, but without being resentful of it. He bows out, sadly, but without despair. The cinemas are sometimes packed, sometimes empty, and resound like the course of our lives.
Recently, in the Caribbean, in one of those old rundown, faded colonial buildings in Old Havana, the serious girl in a tutu that she was filming suddenly began to prance about in reaction to one of the Tramp's pirouettes before returning to her exercises with assiduity and concentration. This girl, destined to push herself beyond her limits to one day become a prima ballerina, was filled with Chaplin’s joy for a few distracted moments.
« Tomorrow the birds will sing » consists of an installation of videos filmed in the Havana interiors where the young filmmaker shot two of her films, Horizontes and Nuestro Mar. The latter is being screened as part of this exhibition. Watching these sequences plunges the viewer into the everyday life of twins, teenagers, parents, an old man with his cat, and a nagging ghost in a rocking chair. All of them are seeing their lives pass before their eyes in black and white on TV.
This wonderful creative project staged in the Manoir de Ban’s attic can be seen from 17 July for a period of one month. Visitors will be able to immerse themselves in a Cuban atmosphere, much loved by Charlie Chaplin and very familiar to him. A nod to that Caribbean island where the artist left a mark.
