Words can hardly describe what I feel for this video clip, which I discovered recently.

The short movie “C’était und rendez-vous”, by Claude Lelouch, dates back to 1976 and is about 8 minutes and 40 seconds in length. It shows nothing more than a high speed drive by car through the early morning hours of a summer day in 1976 Paris.

This setting alone fascinates me for a multitude of reasons. I love Paris. I have a very close relation to this city, since I’ve spent a couple of intense months there, years ago. Also, the clip represents a kind of timebox to me, which I’m really fascinated of. 8 minutes, shot in August 1976, more than two years before I was born. The world was a whole different place, back then. A place that I’ve never known.

Lelouch’s work stands in the line of other works of Cinéma Vérité, an art movement characterized by showing “pure” events and moments, trying to unveil truth by raw observations. This “pure” nature of the clip, shot in one single and unmodified take on that early morning in August 1976 captivates me.

Claude Lelouch meets Autechre

But there’s even more to the clip, that I’ve discovered. I found it, because I was searching for some early Autechre tracks on Youtube. I have been a huge Autechre fans since years. And while I’m mostly fond of their later stuff, happening since about their “Untilted” album, sometimes I also fall for their earlier, and more melodic works, like the track “444” from the Incunabula album (1993).

The combination of these old and pure summer images with the epic and mysterious “444” track totally does the trick for me. A whole different and unique experience results for me in this mix, that I cannot really describe and that magically merges the Parisian August 1976 experience with my own memories and connections to that place and that sound.

But see for yourself.