Promesse : quand Skawennati fait fleurir l’avenir au cœur de Montréal

Skawennati présente son projet d'art public Promesse au centre de sa création vive et joyeuse ce 17 juin dernier à Montréal. Photo: Lena Ghio

ENGLISH translation app above

Cet été, Montréal reçoit un cadeau exceptionnel. Un cadeau fait de couleurs, de mémoire, de technologies et d’espoir. Pour célébrer son 70e anniversaire, le Conseil des arts de Montréal a confié à l’artiste kanien’kehá (mohawk) Skawennati la création d’une œuvre publique éphémère qui transforme la façade de la Maison du CAM, sur la rue Sherbrooke Est, face au parc La Fontaine. Intitulée Promesse, cette installation immersive est bien plus qu’une intervention artistique : elle est une invitation à regarder le monde autrement.

À une époque où les villes cherchent à réinventer leurs espaces publics et à créer des lieux de rencontre, Promesse apparaît comme un geste lumineux. Visible gratuitement tout l’été, de jour comme de nuit, l’œuvre habille les majestueuses colonnes du bâtiment patrimonial conçu par l’architecte Eugène Payette de motifs vibrants inspirés des graines des Trois Sœurs : le maïs, les haricots et la courge. Mais l’expérience ne s’arrête pas à ce que l’on voit.

Grâce à la réalité augmentée, les passants peuvent découvrir un univers parallèle où ces Trois Sœurs prennent vie sous la forme d’héroïnes contemporaines. Munis d’un simple téléphone intelligent, les visiteurs sont invités à scanner un code QR pour voir apparaître ces figures protectrices dans une animation tridimensionnelle accompagnée d’une chanson originale mêlant le kanien’kéha, le français et l’anglais.

L’effet est saisissant. La pierre patrimoniale dialogue avec le numérique. Le passé rencontre le futur. La tradition converse avec l’innovation. Cette rencontre entre les mondes résume parfaitement la démarche artistique de Skawennati.

Depuis plus de vingt ans, l’artiste montréalaise développe une pratique unique à la croisée des arts visuels, des technologies numériques et de la narration autochtone. Son travail est reconnu à l’échelle internationale et a été présenté en Europe, en Océanie, en Asie et partout sur l’Île de la Tortue. Elle est aujourd’hui considérée comme l’une des figures majeures du futurisme autochtone, un mouvement artistique qui imagine des futurs où les peuples autochtones occupent pleinement leur place, non pas comme des survivances du passé, mais comme des acteurs essentiels du monde de demain.

L’univers de Skawennati est souvent traversé par des références à la science-fiction, aux jeux vidéo et à l’esthétique cyberpunk. Pourtant, derrière les avatars, les animations et les environnements virtuels se trouvent toujours des questions profondément humaines : qui sommes-nous? Comment transmettre les savoirs? Comment imaginer l’avenir sans oublier nos racines?

Photo: Elisa DESOER

Avec Promesse, ces interrogations prennent une forme particulièrement accessible et généreuse.

L’œuvre puise son inspiration dans les savoirs Hotinonshón (iroquois) et dans l’enseignement des Trois Sœurs, ces plantes cultivées ensemble depuis des siècles. Le maïs offre une structure sur laquelle les haricots peuvent grimper. Les haricots enrichissent le sol en nutriments. La courge protège l’humidité de la terre grâce à ses larges feuilles. Ensemble, elles incarnent un modèle remarquable de coopération, d’équilibre et d’interdépendance.

Dans l’interprétation de Skawennati, les Trois Sœurs deviennent des superhéroïnes contemporaines chargées de rappeler à notre société des valeurs fondamentales : la gratitude, la paix, la durabilité et la responsabilité collective. Le message résonne avec une étonnante actualité.

À l’heure où les enjeux environnementaux, sociaux et culturels occupent une place centrale dans nos réflexions, Promesse propose une vision résolument positive. L’œuvre ne cherche pas à culpabiliser ou à inquiéter. Elle choisit plutôt de célébrer la force des liens, la beauté de la collaboration et la possibilité d’un avenir partagé.

Cette dimension joyeuse est particulièrement importante. L’art public a parfois tendance à souligner les fractures et les tensions du monde contemporain. Ici, Skawennati nous invite à imaginer ce qui nous rassemble. Les couleurs éclatantes qui enveloppent les colonnes, les mouvements fluides des personnages numériques et la musique qui accompagne l’expérience créent un sentiment d’émerveillement presque enfantin.

On s’arrête. On lève les yeux. On sourit.

Photo: Conseil des arts de Montréal / Ruvan Wijesooriya

Et dans cet instant de curiosité naît aussi une réflexion plus profonde sur la présence autochtone dans l’espace urbain.

Comme l’a souligné l’artiste, ce qui transforme véritablement un lieu, c’est de vivre entouré de signes, de symboles et de récits autochtones qui rendent visibles les valeurs qu’ils portent. Montréal est construite sur un territoire riche d’histoires, de mémoires et de savoirs autochtones. Pourtant, ces présences demeurent encore trop souvent invisibles dans le paysage quotidien.

Promesse agit alors comme un rappel bienveillant. Elle nous invite à reconnaître les racines profondes du territoire tout en regardant vers l’avenir.

Le choix du moment n’est d’ailleurs pas anodin. L’inauguration de l’œuvre a lieu à quelques jours de la Journée nationale des peuples autochtones, célébrée le 21 juin. L’installation souligne également le 325e anniversaire de la Grande Paix de Montréal de 1701, un événement historique majeur qui témoigne de la capacité des peuples à construire des relations fondées sur le dialogue et le respect mutuel.

Ainsi, plusieurs temporalités se rencontrent dans cette création : les savoirs ancestraux, l’histoire du territoire, le présent montréalais et les futurs imaginés par l’artiste.

Le Conseil des arts de Montréal ne pouvait rêver plus belle manière de célébrer ses 70 ans. Depuis sept décennies, l’institution soutient la vitalité artistique de la métropole et contribue à faire rayonner la créativité sous toutes ses formes. En choisissant Skawennati pour sa toute première commande d’œuvre publique temporaire issue d’un concours, le CAM affirme son engagement envers une culture vivante, inclusive et tournée vers l’avenir.

Cette décision témoigne aussi de la place grandissante occupée par les artistes autochtones dans le paysage culturel québécois et canadien. Leurs voix enrichissent les conversations contemporaines et ouvrent de nouvelles façons de comprendre notre rapport au territoire, à la mémoire et à la communauté.

Skawennati Photo: Lena Ghio

Pendant tout l’été, les Montréalaises et les Montréalais pourront donc découvrir cette œuvre exceptionnelle au détour d’une promenade. Certains s’arrêteront quelques minutes. D’autres reviendront plusieurs fois. Des enfants joueront avec les animations numériques. Des visiteurs venus d’ailleurs découvriront une facette inattendue de la ville.

Et chacun repartira peut-être avec quelque chose de précieux : une image, une émotion, une question ou une inspiration. Car c’est aussi cela, la force de l’art. Il transforme les bâtiments en récits. Les espaces en expériences. Les passants en participants.

Avec Promesse, Skawennati nous offre bien plus qu’une œuvre publique. Elle nous propose un horizon. Un avenir où les savoirs autochtones éclairent les chemins à venir. Un avenir où tradition et innovation avancent côte à côte. Un avenir où la gratitude, l’interdépendance et le respect du vivant ne sont plus seulement des idéaux, mais des pratiques quotidiennes.

Et si la promesse contenue dans le titre de l’œuvre était précisément celle-là : la possibilité de construire ensemble un monde plus beau, plus juste et plus vivant?

Cet été, au cœur de Montréal, cette promesse prend forme sous nos yeux.

LENA GHIO   

Twitter  Facebook  Instagram   Pinterest  Paradox   

And the winners are...! Artist Awards at the 13th Montreal Asian International Film Festival (MAiFF) 2026

 

Arts East-West Celebrates Asian Filmmakers with Artist Awards at the 13th Montreal Asian International Film Festival North American Premiere of Vietnamese-German Filmmaker Claudia Tuyết Scheffel’s LONEY & HAVENDER Takes Grand Prix and Best Actor; Canadian Filmmaker Min Sook Lee Receives Silk Thread Award for Best Director Montreal, June 15, 2026 — An enthusiastic and generous public response to the 13th edition of the Montreal Asian International Film Festival has affirmed profound engagement for Asian film and culture in Montreal. The festival closed on Saturday with an Awards Ceremony marking two milestones: the inaugural Dancheong Competition and Silk Thread Awards, and a transformation from the Korean Film Festival Canada into an inclusive platform for all Asians. The Dancheong Grand Prix was awarded to Vietnamese-German filmmaker Claudia Tuyết Scheffel for her debut feature, Loney & Havender, screening its North American Premiere at MAiFF. The Silk Thread Award for Best Director went to Canadian filmmaker Min Sook Lee for There Are No Words, which screened its Quebec Premiere at MAiFF. The festival presented over 60 Asian arthouse films and events across nine Montréal venues under its 2026–2027 theme — Tangibility: Soil, Body, Stories — drawing audiences to works from Canada, Japan, Korea, Hong Kong, China, Vietnam, Germany, Iran, Australia, the United States, and First Nations communities. DANCHEONG COMPETITION & SILK THREAD AWARDS 2026 marked the official launch of MAiFF’s two main artist awards. Named after dancheong (단청 / 丹靑), the ancient Korean art of painting wooden palaces with vivid colours, the Dancheong Competition honours emerging filmmakers who are painting bold new strokes through cinematic narratives. It specifically celebrates Asian and Asian-Canadian directors presenting their first or second films. The Silk Thread Awards are drawn from all festival sections, recognizing the rarest and freshest works in the festival as selected by the jury. Nine winners were selected across both competitions: DANCHEONG Competition: Grand Prix / Best Director — Claudia Tuyết Scheffel for Loney & Havender  Best Screenplay — Choi Jeongdan for In the Sea of Strange Thoughts Best Cinematography — Park Hae-Oh for Broken Dawn Best Actor — Tri Ân Bùi for Loney & Havender Best Editing — David Quach for Dad vs. Bees Silk Thread Awards: Best Director — Min Sook Lee for There Are No Words Best Actor — Yoo Yi-Ha for The Final Semester Best Artistic Production — Kyungbin Park for Only for a Day Best Music Score — Andrew Yong Hoon Lee for There Are No Words Special Mentions:  Sandra Desmazieres for Comme un fleuve  Alice Shin for Landscapes of Home  INTERNATIONAL JURY Awardees were selected by an international jury composed of industry professionals and artists. The invited jurors were Park Ri-Woong (Korea, Filmmaker, winner of the 2025 KFFC Best Director Award for Land of Morning Calm), William Dere (Quebec, Filmmaker and writer, films incl. Moving the Mountain and Etre chinois au Quebec), Yiou Wang (China/US, Media artist, co-founder of Mixanthropy Studio), and our student jury member Sarah-Maude Lemieux (Quebec, Film student, long-time volunteer with Arts East-West). The jury discussions to choose the winners were strikingly in-depth. When speaking about the Grand Prix winner, juror William Dere commented, “Loney and Havender presents an imaginative concept that depicts the plight of immigrants in the diaspora, and it is even more impressive that it is the director’s first feature-length film.” Yiou Wang spoke highly about the Silk Thread winner for Best Director, saying, “I was struck by the emotional intensity of There Are No Words. [Min Sook Lee] tries to reconcile with her deepest trauma by weaving these painful things into her artwork, while still managing to make it beautiful.” Park Ri-Woong praised the acting and storytelling in The Final Semester, the Silk Thread winner for Best Actor: “The film avoids cliches, telling the story of a very ordinary main character for two hours without ever feeling stretched out.” Jet Lag in Summer, which had its North American Premiere at MAiFF and was nominated for the Silk Thread Awards, also received praise from student juror Sarah-Maude Lemieux: “I loved how the film’s cinematography reflected the characterization. The story strongly developed each character.”  THE PRIZES The competition prizes reflect Arts East-West's interdisciplinary roots. Each award is a handmade textile bookmark, conceived and designed by multidisciplinary artist Mi-Jeong Lee and sewn by artist Kim Mi-Ja. The bookmarks’ varied shapes are woven from new and recycled textiles, carrying both time and memory. Inspired by the vivid colours of Korean dancheong and the layered tradition of bojagi, the bookmark is itself a small artwork. This year, each bookmark is accompanied by two books honouring the authors who led MAiFF's writing workshop: Oxford Soju Club by Jinwoo Park and Annapurna's Bounty by Veena Gokhale. Together, these works honour not only filmmakers, but the wider artistic community that makes cultural exchange possible. UNPRECEDENTED SUCCESS MAiFF 2026 received overwhelming interest from Montreal’s general public, with several screenings such as Iwai Shunji’s Love Letter and Xiaodan He’s Montreal, Ma Belle being fully sold out. The festival’s Closing Weekend, which took place June 12-14, included a panel discussion on the landscape of Asian-Canadian arts in Montreal and screened the closing film, Choi Jeongdan’s In the Sea of Strange Thoughts, at Cinema Moderne.  The sweeping response to the Dancheong Competition & Silk Thread Awards announcements led to many fresh faces attending the Encore Screening on June 14. The encore presented Claudia Tuyết Scheffel’s Loney and Havender, the Grand Prix winner, to a brand new audience that engaged positively with the director during the film’s Q&A.  As the 13th edition of MAiFF officially wraps up, audiences can still watch the free online screenings from the comfort of their homes. The retrospective on late Korean actor Ahn Sung-ki, titled “The Actor's Mirror: Ahn Sung-ki and the Female Lineage of Korean Cinema,” features 15 films in partnership with the Korean Film Archive which will be available to watch online from anywhere in the world until June 30, 2026.  ABOUT ARTS EAST-WEST Arts East-West, a nonprofit media arts organization, has been here in Montreal since 1995. This year marks a profound transformation from the Korean Film Festival Canada into MAiFF, the Montreal Asian International Film Festival. The festival keeps the same roots while boldly expanding our vision — embracing all of Asia and all Asian-Canadian voices, while keeping Korean cinema at its heart. The new motto says it simply: UNBOUND.   The 14th MAiFF is scheduled May 27 – June 13, 2027 www.artseastwest.ca

Orwell: 2+2=5 on MUBI

Orwell: 2+2=5 on MUBI  TRAILER

When 2+2 No Longer Equals 4: Orwell, Raoul Peck, and the Crisis of Reality

Raoul Peck’s Orwell: 2+2=5 arrives not as a documentary about a writer but as an intervention into a historical moment. It is a film haunted by the suspicion that George Orwell’s darkest fears were not warnings about some distant future but diagnoses of recurring tendencies within modern civilization itself. Watching Peck’s lucid and unsettling work, one is struck by a paradox: Orwell remains the most quoted political writer of the twentieth century precisely because he understood something timeless about power. Yet his relevance today is not merely political. It is existential. His work illuminates not only how governments manipulate truth, but how human beings accommodate themselves to lies when reality becomes too painful, complex, or inconvenient to bear.

The film takes its title from the most famous act of psychological coercion in Nineteen Eighty-Four (1984): Winston Smith’s forced acceptance that two plus two equals five. The slogan has become a cultural shorthand for ideological conformity, but Peck wisely understands that its significance extends far beyond partisan politics. Orwell’s real subject was the destruction of objective reality itself. Tyranny begins not when citizens are forbidden to speak but when they lose confidence in their own perceptions.

This insight resonates with extraordinary force today. Across the world, democratic institutions appear increasingly fragile. Political leaders cultivate alternative realities. Social media transforms opinion into identity and identity into tribal warfare. Artificial intelligence generates persuasive fictions at industrial scale. Facts compete with narratives; narratives compete with emotions. In such an environment, Orwell’s vision no longer feels prophetic. It feels descriptive.

Peck structures the documentary around Orwell’s final years on the remote Scottish island of Jura, where he struggled to complete 1984 while tuberculosis consumed his body. Damian Lewis’s voiceover brings Orwell’s letters and diaries to life with remarkable intimacy. What emerges is not the image of a literary monument but of a frail, exhausted man writing under the shadow of death. Orwell himself remarked that the novel was written “under the influence of tuberculosis.” The observation is more profound than it first appears. Few works of literature possess such muscular intellectual confidence while being created by someone physically collapsing. The body was failing; the mind remained fiercely independent.

Peck juxtaposes Orwell’s illness with the obsession of authoritarian systems for strength, fitness, and spectacle. It is one of many subtle ironies in the film. Tyrannies often worship physical power because genuine intellectual freedom remains beyond their control. Orwell understood that the strongest act of resistance is sometimes simply to perceive reality accurately.

Yet the greatest achievement of Orwell: 2+2=5 lies in its insistence that Orwell’s ideas emerged not from abstraction but from experience. Before he became Orwell, he was Eric Blair: colonial policeman, socialist journalist, reluctant celebrity, and perhaps most importantly, witness.

No book demonstrates this better than Down and Out in Paris and London (1933), the Orwell work that taught me more about the human condition than any of his political writings. While Animal Farm and 1984 transformed him into a global icon, Down and Out reveals the moral intelligence behind those later masterpieces and highlights the societal structures that keep the very poor from pulling out of their predicament.

The book chronicles Orwell’s immersion in poverty among dishwashers, tramps, laborers, and the homeless. Unlike many social observers, Orwell does not sentimentalize suffering. Nor does he reduce poverty to economics. He understands that deprivation alters one’s relationship with time, dignity, self-respect, and possibility itself.

What remains astonishing nearly a century later is the precision of his observations. Orwell describes homelessness not merely as the absence of shelter but as a condition of social invisibility. The poor become people whom society ceases to notice except as problems to be managed. Reading those pages today, one recognizes contemporary cities in every line. The tents beneath overpasses, the encampments near luxury developments, the widening gap between prosperity and precarity—all seem anticipated by Orwell’s unsparing gaze.He possessed what might be called a Saturnian view of reality: cold, disciplined, resistant to illusion. 

He rarely offered solutions. Instead, he illuminated mechanisms. He showed how institutions shape consciousness, how economic structures influence morality, and how language obscures suffering. His greatness lay not in resolving contradictions but in revealing them.

This quality distinguishes Orwell from many contemporary political commentators. Modern discourse often demands certainty, allegiance, and moral clarity. Orwell distrusted all three. He was capable of criticizing imperialism while acknowledging his own complicity in colonial structures. He fought for socialism while exposing the crimes of Soviet communism. He championed ordinary people while remaining painfully aware of his own class origins.

This complexity forms one of the most compelling themes in D.J. Taylor’s biography, "Orwell: A New Life" (Little, Brown, 496 pages). As Peter Marks observed in his insightful essay, “The self-fashioning of George Orwell,” the enduring fascination of Orwell lies partly in “the difference between the kind of person he was and the kind of person he imagined himself to be.” Marks, Emeritus Professor of English at the University of Sydney and author of George Orwell the Essayist, identifies a central tension that runs throughout Orwell’s life: the perpetual effort to transform Eric Blair into George Orwell.

Indeed, Orwell may have been literature’s greatest self-invention. The colonial schoolboy became the champion of the dispossessed. The Etonian intellectual became the chronicler of miners and tramps. The aspiring novelist became history’s most influential political writer. Yet the transformation was never complete. Taylor’s biography wisely avoids hagiography. It presents Orwell as brilliant, courageous, occasionally prejudiced, sometimes contradictory, and frequently difficult.

These contradictions do not diminish Orwell. They make him more valuable.

Peck’s documentary occasionally glides past some of these uncomfortable dimensions. The controversies surrounding Orwell’s list of suspected communist sympathizers, his complicated attitudes toward women and homosexuality, and aspects of his political judgment receive limited attention. Yet even these omissions inadvertently underscore a larger truth: Orwell’s significance does not depend on personal perfection.

His authority derives from intellectual honesty.

In an era increasingly obsessed with ideological purity, Orwell’s willingness to examine his own assumptions feels almost revolutionary. He recognized that the most dangerous lies are often those we tell ourselves.

The contemporary parallels are impossible to ignore. When Orwell wrote about Newspeak, he was describing the manipulation of language to narrow the boundaries of thought. Today, linguistic battles dominate public life. Political movements across the spectrum compete to define permissible vocabulary. Social media rewards outrage while punishing nuance. Algorithms amplify certainty and suppress ambiguity.

Meanwhile, advances in artificial intelligence introduce new forms of epistemological instability. Deepfakes, synthetic media, automated propaganda, and algorithmic persuasion all threaten to blur distinctions between reality and fabrication. Orwell did not predict the technology. He predicted the psychology.

That is why Orwell: 2+2=5 feels so urgent.

" Orwell described the four penny coffin as an inexpensive and comparatively safe sleeping option for the poor of London." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Down_and_Out_in_Paris_and_London

Peck’s montage of contemporary figures—Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, Viktor Orbán, Narendra Modi, Benjamin Netanyahu and others—does not argue that today’s democracies have become Oceania. Rather, it demonstrates how authoritarian impulses emerge repeatedly under different ideological banners. Orwell understood that tyranny has no permanent political home. It can wear the language of nationalism, revolution, religion, security, or even freedom.

The film’s most moving moments occur when it returns to Orwell’s faith in what he called the “proles”—ordinary people whose common sense remains resistant to official dogma. Peck offers this as a note of cautious hope. Yet it is a fragile hope.

For Orwell never believed progress was inevitable. Civilization survives only when individuals maintain the courage to see clearly and speak truthfully.

That may be the ultimate lesson of both Peck’s documentary and Orwell’s life. The battle over reality is never finally won. Every generation inherits it anew.

Today, amid information warfare, political polarization, technological disruption, rising authoritarianism, and deepening social inequality, Orwell’s work remains indispensable not because he predicted our future but because he understood our nature. He knew that human beings crave belonging, certainty, and meaning. He also knew that these desires make us vulnerable to manipulation.

Few writers have explored this dilemma with greater clarity.

And few films have captured its contemporary urgency as effectively as Orwell: 2+2=5.

The documentary leaves us with an uncomfortable realization. Orwell’s genius was not that he imagined a world where two plus two equals five. His genius was understanding how easily people might accept it—and how difficult, lonely, and necessary it is to insist that it equals four.

 

Epilogue: The Man Behind the Myth

To understand why Orwell still speaks so urgently to the twenty-first century, one must look beyond 1984 to the deeper moral formation that began with Down and Out in Paris and London. More than a memoir of poverty, it established the ethical lens through which Orwell would view power, class, and human dignity. Living among tramps, laborers, and the homeless taught him that suffering is not merely economic; it is a form of social invisibility. The compassion and unsentimental realism that animate his later work originate here.

Yet Orwell himself was a creation. As Orwell: A New Life argues, there remained a persistent tension between Eric Blair, the Eton-educated son of empire, and George Orwell, the self-fashioned champion of ordinary people. The scholar Peter Marks has perceptively described this as the gap between the person Orwell was and the person he aspired to become. That tension generated much of his intellectual energy.

His experience in the Spanish Civil War, later immortalized in Homage to Catalonia, convinced him that propaganda could distort reality as effectively as bullets. It was there that Orwell witnessed ideological factions rewriting events in real time, a revelation that became the foundation of his later warnings about totalitarianism.

None of this absolves Orwell's flaws. His documented prejudices, his discomfort with homosexuality, and his infamous list of suspected “crypto-communists” remain troubling facts. Yet they neither invalidate his insights nor reduce his achievement. Orwell's greatness lies partly in his willingness to expose uncomfortable truths, including those about himself.

What makes him indispensable today is that his concerns have evolved rather than disappeared. Newspeak has become algorithmic manipulation. State propaganda now coexists with AI-generated misinformation. Surveillance is no longer only governmental but commercial, embedded in platforms that monitor attention, behaviour, and desire. Democratic societies increasingly fragment into competing realities, each sustained by its own information ecosystem.

Many of Orwell's contemporaries remain admired; Orwell remains necessary. The reason is simple: he understood that the ultimate political struggle is not between left and right, but between truth and the forces determined to dissolve it. That battle, perhaps more than ever, is now our own.

The images depict the neighborhoods in Paris and London where he lived in extreme poverty.

LENA GHIO   

Twitter  Facebook  Instagram   Pinterest  Paradox

LA MÉTHODE FELDENKRAIS DE CHANTAL MARTIN

Pour en savoir plus sur la Méthode Feldenkrais et la possibilité de traitements personalisés, suivez ce lien: https://massagefeldenkrais.com/index.html

J’ai connu Chantal Martin alors que nous suivions toutes deux un cours portant sur les femmes en affaires. À cette époque, je ne connaissais pratiquement rien à la méthode Feldenkrais ni à son potentiel pour améliorer la mobilité et le bien-être. Dans le cadre de cette formation, Chantal m’a offert un échantillon de sa pratique sous forme d’un traitement individuel. Cette expérience, qui pouvait sembler simple à première vue, a eu un impact durable sur ma compréhension de mon propre corps.

Comme beaucoup de personnes de ma génération, je vivais avec des tensions constantes dans la nuque et les épaules. J’avais fini par considérer cet état comme normal, sans vraiment réaliser à quel point ces tensions étaient présentes et limitaient ma liberté de mouvement. Pendant cette séance d’essai, j’ai eu une véritable prise de conscience. J’ai été frappée de constater jusqu’à quel point mon cou et mes épaules étaient contractés en permanence. Cette découverte a été un choc, mais aussi une révélation : il existait une autre façon d’habiter mon corps, avec plus de souplesse, de confort et de conscience.

Les années ont passé. Plus de dix ans après cette première rencontre, j’ai développé un problème important à l’épaule droite. La douleur était telle que ma mobilité était sévèrement réduite et que certains mouvements étaient devenus presque impossibles. En cherchant une solution, je me suis souvenue de cette expérience marquante vécue avec Chantal. J’ai alors repris contact avec elle afin de recevoir des traitements individuels.

Cette décision a marqué un tournant important dans mon rétablissement. Grâce aux séances avec Chantal, j’ai progressivement retrouvé la mobilité et la flexibilité de mon épaule. Au-delà de l’amélioration physique, j’ai découvert une approche globale qui m’a permis de mieux comprendre mes habitudes de mouvement et la façon dont elles influençaient mon confort quotidien. Encouragée par les résultats, j’ai commencé à participer aux cours que Chantal offre au Centre Shambala. Ces ateliers sont devenus une source précieuse d’apprentissage et de développement personnel.

Mon parcours avec la méthode Feldenkrais ne s’est toutefois pas arrêté là. Un jour, alors que je marchais dans un parc, je me suis blessée de façon assez importante. La douleur était intense et il m’était impossible de poursuivre ma promenade comme prévu. C’est à ce moment que j’ai réalisé à quel point les apprentissages développés dans les ateliers étaient devenus intégrés. Malgré la douleur, j’ai pris conscience de mon état, de mon environnement et des différentes options qui s’offraient à moi pour rentrer chez moi en sécurité. Pas à pas, j’ai évalué mes capacités, ajusté mes mouvements et utilisé les principes de conscience corporelle acquis au fil des années. J’ai réussi à revenir chez moi lentement, mais avec confiance, en appliquant concrètement ce que j’avais appris.

Par la suite, j’ai également dû faire face à une opération majeure. Encore une fois, les traitements reçus auprès de Chantal ont joué un rôle déterminant dans ma récupération. Ils m’ont aidée à retrouver progressivement ma mobilité, ma capacité à marcher et à reprendre une vie active.

Aujourd’hui, lorsque je regarde le chemin parcouru, je constate qu’il ne me reste qu’environ 15 % des limitations de mobilité dont je souffrais lors de mes premiers rendez-vous privés avec Chantal Martin. Les bénéfices que j’ai retirés de cette démarche sont, pour moi, incalculables. Au-delà de l’amélioration physique, cette approche m’a permis de retrouver une plus grande autonomie, une meilleure qualité de vie et, surtout, une véritable joie de vivre. Je suis profondément reconnaissante envers Chantal pour son accompagnement, son expertise et son engagement à aider les gens à retrouver leur plein potentiel de mouvement.

LENA GHIO   

Twitter  Facebook  Instagram   Pinterest  Paradox

DISCLOSURE DAY in theatres June 12

 “Disclosure Day” Review: Spielberg Returns to the Stars, but Wonder Proves Harder to Recover Than Belief

Nearly half a century after Close Encounters of the Third Kind transformed extraterrestrial life into a cinematic language of awe, Steven Spielberg returns to familiar cosmic territory with Disclosure Day, an ambitious, emotionally charged thriller about government secrecy, alien contact, and humanity’s capacity for empathy. It is a film that arrives at a peculiar cultural moment. What once belonged to the realm of speculative fantasy now occupies an increasingly crowded space of congressional hearings, declassified files, viral UFO videos, and endless online conspiracy ecosystems. The challenge facing Spielberg is not simply convincing audiences that extraterrestrials might exist. It is convincing them that the possibility still inspires wonder.

Disclosure Day succeeds brilliantly as a thriller and often as a philosophical drama. Yet it never fully recaptures the transcendent sense of revelation that made Spielberg’s greatest science-fiction films feel like encounters with the unknown itself. Instead, it becomes something more complicated: a reflection on a society so saturated with information, suspicion, and mythology that even the arrival of the extraordinary risks feeling familiar.

The film opens with remarkable confidence, plunging viewers directly into crisis rather than discovery. Daniel Kellner (Josh O’Connor), a government contractor turned whistleblower, is already fleeing powerful forces determined to suppress evidence of extraterrestrial contact. The familiar first-act journey toward revelation has already happened somewhere off-screen. Spielberg and screenwriter David Koepp are less interested in whether aliens exist than in what happens after certainty arrives.

TRAILER

That narrative choice gives Disclosure Day its distinctive energy. Rather than a mystery, the film becomes a chase. Daniel possesses decades of classified evidence documenting alien encounters, hidden research programs, and the machinery of institutional deception. Pursuing him is Noah Scanlon (Colin Firth), the weary architect of a secrecy regime convinced that disclosure would fracture civilization itself.

Running parallel to Daniel’s story is Margaret Fairchild (Emily Blunt), a Kansas City meteorologist whose life is abruptly altered by inexplicable abilities. She can perceive hidden emotional truths, understand languages she has never learned, and eventually becomes a conduit for communication beyond ordinary human understanding. As Daniel and Margaret move toward one another, the film constructs a collision between political truth and spiritual revelation.

The structure occasionally threatens to overwhelm itself. Koepp’s screenplay is packed with ideas concerning faith, institutional power, psychological evolution, collective memory, and the ethics of disclosure. Some scenes exist almost entirely to articulate competing worldviews. Characters frequently debate whether humanity is ready for the truth, whether religion can survive confirmation of non-human intelligence, and whether secrecy has protected civilization or merely infantilized it.

Yet Spielberg remains one of cinema’s great conductors of movement. Even when the script grows talkative, the film never feels static. Collaborating once again with cinematographer Janusz Kaminski, Spielberg transforms exposition into momentum. The camera glides, circles, pivots, and pursues. Action sequences unfold with extraordinary clarity and elegance, particularly a dazzling set piece involving a collision of automobiles, railways, and impossible timing. Few directors understand spatial storytelling with Spielberg’s instinctive mastery.

John Williams’ score, meanwhile, serves as the film’s emotional bloodstream. At ninety-four, Williams continues to compose music that does not merely accompany images but elevates them into something mythic. His themes here alternate between urgency and yearning, reminding audiences that beneath the conspiracy mechanics lies a deeply human story about connection.

The performances anchor the film’s loftier ambitions. O’Connor gives Daniel an appealing uncertainty. Unlike traditional action heroes, he appears burdened rather than empowered by his role in history. He is not a chosen savior so much as an accidental custodian of dangerous knowledge.

Blunt delivers the film’s strongest work. Margaret’s transformation could easily have descended into abstraction, but Blunt grounds the character in vulnerability. She portrays a woman overwhelmed by the sudden collapse of emotional boundaries. Every glance becomes an act of involuntary intimacy. Every interaction carries the weight of another person’s hidden pain. Her performance quietly reframes the film’s central concern. Disclosure, Spielberg suggests, is not ultimately about aliens. It is about seeing one another clearly.

Colman Domingo brings warmth and moral conviction to Hugo Wakefield, a former insider who has dedicated himself to exposing the truth. Domingo possesses an effortless authority that makes even the screenplay’s most explanatory passages feel persuasive. Firth, by contrast, avoids caricature. His Noah Scanlon is not a villain driven by greed or malice but a bureaucrat exhausted by responsibility. The film’s most compelling tension emerges from the possibility that both men may be right.

Yet for all its strengths, Disclosure Day reveals an intriguing limitation. Spielberg’s enduring message has always centered on empathy and acceptance of the Other. Here, extraterrestrials function once again as mirrors through which humanity can rediscover its better instincts. The problem is that the aliens themselves feel curiously underimagined.

The film draws heavily from familiar twentieth-century UFO mythology: Roswell, Area 51, secret autopsies, hidden archives, government cover-ups. These ideas remain culturally potent, but they belong to an older imaginative framework. In an era shaped by artificial intelligence, advanced cosmology, and unprecedented visual sophistication, the extraterrestrials often appear tethered to mid-century conceptions of alien life.

Their physical representations are perhaps the film’s weakest element. While technically accomplished, many of the designs evoke established cultural archetypes rather than genuinely novel forms of intelligence. One wishes Spielberg had pushed further. These beings could have shimmered between states of matter, communicated through emotional architecture, or embodied forms that challenged human perception itself. Instead, they frequently resemble descendants of decades-old iconography.

This is where Disclosure Day differs most profoundly from Close Encounters. The earlier film created imagery that reshaped popular culture. This one inherits imagery that culture has already absorbed, repeated, and commodified. Spielberg once defined how audiences imagined extraterrestrial life. Here, he appears to be responding to a mythology that has grown beyond him. And yet dismissing the film on those grounds would be a mistake. Because while Disclosure Day may not inspire wonder in the traditional sense, it achieves something else. It interrogates the nature of belief in an age when information is limitless but trust is scarce.

The film repeatedly asks whether truth possesses intrinsic value. Would disclosure unite humanity? Or would it deepen existing fractures? Would evidence liberate us, or simply become another weapon in endless ideological conflict? These questions resonate far beyond science fiction. The emotional climax, which arrives not through spectacle but through recognition, demonstrates Spielberg’s continuing faith in cinema as a moral force. It is unabashedly sentimental. Some viewers will resist its sincerity. Others may find it deeply moving precisely because it refuses cynicism.

For all its fascination with extraterrestrials, Disclosure Day ultimately argues that humanity’s greatest challenge is not making contact with alien intelligence. It is recovering our capacity for empathy in a world drowning in noise. The film never achieves the overwhelming wonder of Spielberg’s finest science-fiction work. It follows cultural myths more often than it creates new ones. Its extraterrestrials remain less imaginative than its ideas. Yet even when it stumbles, Disclosure Day possesses a seriousness of purpose and emotional conviction that distinguish it from most contemporary blockbusters. It is not a close encounter with the sublime. But it is an intelligent, engrossing, and unexpectedly thoughtful meditation on truth, belief, and the fragile bonds that hold civilization together. In an era increasingly defined by distrust, Spielberg’s enduring faith in human connection remains its own kind of radical act.

Epilogue: The great irony of Disclosure Day is that Spielberg has returned to extraterrestrials only to discover that the real mystery is no longer whether we are alone in the universe. It is whether we can still be astonished by anything at all

LENA GHIO   

Twitter  Facebook  Instagram   Pinterest  Paradox