Some extracts from the Mummy Mommy press book

 

"Pasolini spoke of a poetic cinema in contrast to a cinema of prose. Poetry! Poetry is everywhere in Mummy Mommy, first to be found in the rush of images and in the dazzle of the montage. (...) This film is like none other today, and that is why it appeals to me and moves me."

(Jean-Paul Rappeneau, director of Cyrano among others, President of the Cinémathèque Française)

 

"I thank Laury Granier for this film. It is curious and poetic and it deserves showing in the "underground" world. It gives much light and optimism which is so needed in the world today!"

(Carolyn Carson, Star-ballerina and star-choreographer at the Paris Opera. )

 

"(...) With exemplary enthusiasm, Laury Granier launched a formidable assault against the fortress of film making. As Merlin led the knights of the round table into their adventures, Laury Granier defeated the curses and outsmarted the snares of film production, persuading one of the greatest dancers of our time to enter into the spirit of his Mumbo-Jumbo in the process. (...) Laury Granier has invented assault course editing (...)"

(Jean Rouch, film director, President of the Cinémathèque Française, Professor of Cinema and Ethnology at Paris X, ethnologist)

 

"(...) This film is the product of an intense thought process on the subject of editing: 1700 shots (which is considerable, as a feature film will on average contain 600). The result is an intricate web of images and rhythms which give the film a dreamlike quality. The film draws on all forms of art: sculpture, architecture, dance, writing, painting, video-art and music (original music composed by Leonard Berstein's ex-Harpist at the New York Philharmonic, Margaret Brill, and by Alain Kremski, Olivier Lliboutry and Michel Deneuve)."

(in ErNeSt hebdo.96, weekly of the Ecole Normale Supérieure, n.19)

 

"(...) This film is an initiation fairy tale, danced entertainment, straight out of its author's fantasies, on the themes of mummification and rebirth. The director conducted his work as the painter of miniatures, dividing his film into nine chapters preceded by written panels, translated into thirteen languages. Talking about his reflection of the rituals of agony and death, the director asks: 'Isn't film making a modern form of mummification and rebirth?'"

(in Catalogue du festival du film d'art de l'UNESCO).

 

"(...) Laury Granier successfully confronted the problems of shooting and particularly of editing, constantly refining his work. (...)"

(Jean Gili, Professor of Cinema at La Sorbonne, critic and writer (The history of Italian cinema))

 

" (...) Laury Granier's gigantic chimera has seen the light of day at last, and he deserves great praise for it. His film takes us back to the golden age of the avant-garde, in the mid-twenties, when cinema was still an art, in the hands of poets. Mummy Mommy could also be called, by reference to Jean Cocteau: "The song of a poet".

(Claude Beylie, Professor of film making at La Sorbonne, film critic)

 

"(...) Laury Granier's film is a magic lamp: it spreads a supernatural light upon the bodies of the characters, metamorphosing them, and draws us into a strange and magical dance. (...) This film leaves us with a deep and striking impression, the impression of having had contact with pure energy, a euphoric impression, in stark contrast with any intellectual discourse. In the story told in the film, a mummy is brought back to life, anguish is exorcised and, at the end, we come to believe that we too have found once more the wild freedom of youth."

(Michelle Finck, writer, poet, script writer, reader in comparative literature at Strasbourg University, in Poésie et danse à l'époque moderne, Armand Colin)

 

"(...)His Luxembourg gardens have all the soft and lightly faded colours of childhood memories. (...) Yet the accelerating staccato of images keeps us from yielding to the sweet pleasures of nostalgia. It is not the simple charm of memories which causes Laury to transfigure the Luxembourg gardens, but the fierce breath of dreams and poetic fantasy. (...) As in a dream, the plot is simple, eclectic and yet linear : the persecution, agony, mummification and resurrection of a ballerina. As in a dream, the plot develops into a profusion of meaningful details, staging objects and masks whose symbolism remains vague at first, in a ballet of richly coloured and mysterious characters. As in a dream, the story allows for humour (hilarious Jean Rouch, placid Magi among the children's sandpits), for the incongruous (a hunting party on a merry-go-round ) and for the fantastic (Pegasus at full gallop on the Champ de Mars). As in a dream, finally, the subtlety of the narrative lies also in the enthralling evocative power of these images. (...) Laury Granier's final ambition is clearly none other that to use his camera, his memories and his imagination to trace the first words of [a] universal language."

(Laurent Burin des Roziers, in Turbulences Vidéo, n.14, January 1997)

To receive a copy of the entire press book in french, or a still photograph for publishing, please call us in Paris, France on (33) 01 46 33 11 18 or send us a fax on (33) 01 46 34 53 04 or mail me laurygranier@free.fr .Please spell your name, the name of your organisation and your address clearly.