Destin des Halles

About - Destin des Halles

Les Halles is a legendary district of Paris, but also the most central. Frédéric Biamonti delves into an architectural history buffeted by political hazards, from the destruction of the Baltard pavilions to renovation projects.
Demolished and then completely rebuilt in the 1970s, the Les Halles district is already the subject of a global transformation project. It must be said that the architecture of the place is heterogeneous and has aged badly.
The judgment of Claude Vasconi, the architect of the Forum des Halles, is unequivocal: "Today, Les Halles is a beautiful waste!". The main reason? An urban planning subject to political pressure inaugurated in the 1960s when General de Gaulle decided to move the large market to Rungis. Les Halles were then deserted, emptied of their meaning.
The urban planning project that followed was only underground, with a shopping center and a large train station that would make the heart of Paris more accessible. The Baltard pavilions were knocked down so that the construction site could be carried out in the open air. The hole in Les Halles would remain gaping for fifteen years, since no overall project had been thought of.
At the end of the seventies, Valéry Giscard d'Estaing tried to restore unity to the district, but he was thwarted by Jacques Chirac, the new Mayor of Paris. Everyone wanted to take over the construction site and a long parade of architects began. Claude Vasconi saw his own project cut short by Chirac and confided: "I don't go to Les Halles anymore, it hurts my heart too much!"
In 2003, Bertrand Delanoë launched a new competition...

Frédéric Biamonti

Frédéric Biamonti was born in 1964. He first studied at the Institut d’Etudes Politiques de Paris (Sciences-Po), before turning to cinema. He continued his studies at the FEMIS national film school, and then got involved in film and documentary production, working in particular as an assistant director for documentary productions for Public Television (France Télévisions). He also collaborated on fiction films by Arnaud and Jean Marie Larrieu, Olivier Ducastel and Jacques Martineau, Bruno Bontzolakis and Frédéric Videau.
From 1990, he lived between Paris and the United States, first in New York where he studied photography at the International Center of Photography, then in Chicago where he taught in the Cinema and Video Department of the School of the Art Institute. In Paris, he also teaches in the Cinema Department of the University of Paris 8.
Since 2000, he has made his own documentary films, working first on American subjects: Huntsville, the penal colony (2001), Sun City, the antechamber of paradise (2003), The lessons of Watergate (2004). Films on urban planning and architecture followed one after the other, starting with L’île Seguin, from Renault to Pinault in 2002. Since Destin des Halles (2005), he has regularly collaborated on these subjects with the architect and critic Françoise Fromonot.
History is a recurring preoccupation in his work, as evidenced by the biographical films devoted to the politician Jean Lecanuet (2005) or the pamphleteer writer Jean-Edern Hallier (2006), or more recently to the historian Arlette Farge (2009).

Génerique - Destin des Halles

Réalisateur	Frederic Biamonti
Image	Didier Hill Derive
Son	Jean-Luc Verdier
Musique	Originale : Eric Thomas
Montage	Melanie Braux

Une coproduction antoine martin production – France 3 Paris Ile de France- France 5
Avec le soutien de la Région Haute-Norandie
du Centre National de la Cinématographie
de la Procirep et de l’Angoa