Foyer is a film born from experiments with filming a sheet of white paper placed a few centimeters in front of the camera lens. The initial intuition was simple: take the camera onto the streets of Tunis and observe how this dividing element interacts with the surrounding light, vibrates with the air's movements, darkens with the passage of a cloud, or changes when a person or object comes too close. This experiment evolved when passers-by, attracted by the device, approached to ask questions and talk. I then realized that their words and voices imbued this blank paper with poetic and political content, both subtle and unexpected. The film developed much like a roll of film exposed to light: it was progressively influenced by its surroundings and the events that unfolded around it. 

Ismaïl Bahri

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Foyer

A place where one builds a fire. A place for gathering, where the family lives. Dwelling, home, house, abode. By analogy with fire, that radiates energy. Place, spot from which heat and light radiate. Source of a foyer. Focal. Vertex of the conical beam formed by refraction of reflexion of a light beam, formed by parallel rays. Foyer (focus) by reflexion (mirror), by refraction (lens). Virtual foyer (focus): where the reflected rays, once prolonged, meet. Central point. Center.

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Foyer

A film / a fire

The sheet of paper / the cinema screen

The film’s title refers to the formation, however ephemeral, of a foyer of looks: the filmmaker and the passers-by look on together at the piece of paper, commenting on the ongoing experiment. An experiment that will then be watched by the spectator in the cinema theatre. Like the fire around which we gather, the cinema screen becomes the foyer where varying projections meet, but also a place of divergence amongst this community of onlookers.