In Bagnolet, La Ressourcerie recycles cinema sets

At the corner of rue de la Liberté and rue de l’Egalité in Bagnolet, in the east of Paris, the sounds of saws have been coming out for six months from a shed of 400 square meters, filled with tons of wood of all sizes and shapes. At first glance, a classic carpentry. But you have to linger there, open your eyes, to discover other scattered objects, almost lost in the middle of all this wood. A cast iron fountain that seems from another era, a piano, an old camera …

A little further on, dozens of swinging hospital doors that come straight … from the film In his lifetime, by Emmanuelle Bercot, presented in the Official Selection out of competition at the Cannes Film Festival. A hospital serves as the central setting for this feature film where Catherine Deneuve plays the role of a mother who has to deal with her son’s illness.

Escape game and short film

From now on, these elements are stored in a hangar at La Ressourcerie, where the members of this association have been storing the sets of films or series for six months at the end of the shootings. Few small furniture, but imposing rooms. Essentially wooden panels used to build walls, called “decor sheets” in the middle, to which fabrics are attached or which have been painted according to the will of the chief decorator. But also windows, doors or carpets.

“For thirty years, with the increase in the cost of land in France and the low cost of materials, productions prefer to throw away than to conserve. »Karine d’Orlan de Polignac, one of the founders of La Ressourcerie

Some parts of the decor are rented, others sold to different sectors: cinema, theater, events, but also to architects, students or individuals. The imposing doors of the hospital from Emmanuelle Bercot’s film have almost all disappeared, scattered between an escape game and a short film… Sets that were sometimes used only for a few minutes. If the association had not recovered them, all of them would have been thrown away.

“An ecological disaster… A film produces on average around 15 tonnes of waste, 70% of which is wood, explains Karine d’Orlan de Polignac, one of the founders of La Ressourcerie. In the past, sets were stored in movie studios and reused. But for thirty years, with the increase in the cost of land in France and the low cost of materials, productions like throw that keep. “

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