Claude Régy

“Who can he have been”. Rilke asks the question. To this day, nobody has come up with an answer. A drug addict, alcoholic, incestuous, mad, obsessed with self-destruction, and imbibed with Christian beliefs - born to a Protestant father, and Catholic mother. Born in Salzburg in 1887, he signs up, after interrupting his studies, as a military pharmacist in 1910.
He is 23 years old.
Four years later the First World War breaks out in Europe.
The young pharmacist-soldier finds himself on the Grodek front, unable to cope with the numbers of the injured or the severity of their wounds. A world full of the agonizing shrieks of men and horses alike, their guts spilling out, amputations, and head-wounds.
The poet-pharmacist keeps by certain drugs reserved for the injured for his own personal use.
He dies from a cocaine overdose.
Accidental death or suicide, nobody knows.
The Battle of Grodek: “All roads lead to black decay”. His final poem: Grodek.
Dead at the age of 27 years old.
First publications of his poems at the age of 21 years old. In six years of writing, Trakl creates a lifetime of work.
Trakl and Rimbaud, genius-like in their shared precociousness.
Laconic and intense, Trakl brings together the seemingly irreconcilable, to devastating effect.
Ever sensitive to rhythms and sounds, attentive to silence, he opens up interior spaces within us. We enter into a mode of perception beyond that of pure intelligibility.
Trakl is all about a magical organization of language.
He reaches out to us at the very centre of our being and our contradictions.

Claude Régy.

Du Régal pour les vautours – A film by Alexandre Barry
The film drifts us off on a journey into the heart of the work, and life, of Claude Régy. With night-time eyes open, visions come to us. Places, faces, memories, and reminiscences come to the surface like superimposed fragments of mirrors. In Paris, Japan, Korea, and Norway, Claude Régy gives us an insight into the glowing glimpses of his long voyage. An adventure into unexplored zones that began over sixty years ago.
© Zeugma Films – 2016 – Running time : 1h10

Preview screenings, followed by an encounter with the film-maker and Claude Régy :
Mon. 3 October 20h / Forum des images (salle 300) – Forum des Halles 75001 Paris
Free admission on reservation at 01 53 45 17 17

Sat. 8 October 15h30 / Nanterre-Amandiers, centre dramatique national (grande salle)
Price : 5€ – Free admission for ticket holders to the show.