Publisher, translator and champion of cinemas off the beaten track, Bertrand Grimault looks at his time without gloss. Invoking Antonin Artaud’s words — “All eras are vile” — he speaks of the violence of the world, but also of the flashes of beauty that endure and deserve to be preserved.
In a world shaken by wars, political tensions and technological cacophony, Bertrand Grimault recalls a line by Antonin Artaud that rejects easy illusions. A programmer, projectionist, translator and publisher, he nevertheless looks for beauty where it eludes us: in forgotten films, outlying texts and artistic gestures that fly under the radar. His work with Monoquini thus maps out another way of circulating culture, on a small scale, with deep attention to the works and to the people who bring them to life.
Artaud’s words are no disillusioned slogan pasted onto current events. Rather, they suggest that every era bears its own violence, blind spots and mechanisms of oppression, even when these are dressed up as something new. For Grimault, contemporary technologies are not enough to conceal this continuity, and may even provide a glossy veneer for old ways of controlling or impoverishing minds.
This unsparing view does not, however, amount to giving up. The Bordeaux-based publisher speaks of a fragile beauty, sometimes under threat, that can still sustain those able to see and protect it. It cannot heal the whole world, but it opens moments of respite, shared spaces where we look differently and, for a while, refuse to let ourselves be reduced to despair.
In his words, catastrophe is never abstract: war, the suffering of populations and the rise of authoritarian ideas weigh heavily on the present. Faced with these realities, Grimault promises neither a miraculous cure nor superficial consolation. Instead, he champions vigilance, sensitivity and the possibility of bringing works into being that disrupt familiar habits.
Clear-sightedness without surrender
The darkness of this assessment coexists with a kind of forward momentum. Citizen movements and youth mobilizations strike him as signs of resistance to political inertia. Their energy brings an unexpected light to a landscape he describes as dominated by conformity and the machinery of power.
This attentiveness to dissent also runs through the way he talks about culture. Grimault is wary of conventional posturing, dazzling rhetoric that conceals a lack of risk, and institutions more concerned with their image than their purpose. In his view, art remains alive when it invents singular situations, on the margins of the circuits that too often determine what deserves to be seen.
“Underground” then describes less a uniform aesthetic than an attitude. It means creating without waiting for approval, taking the paths less travelled and preserving space for works that unsettle or surprise. Parallel culture does not present itself as a refuge outside the world; rather, it reveals the world’s blind spots.
This perspective explains the importance he gives to projection. The theater, the screen and the shared presence of an audience make up a tangible experience in which each film can alter the rhythm of our gaze. In this shared darkness, the viewer receives more than images: they experience time, materiality and the possibility of a less distracted attention.
From cinemas off the beaten track to parallel histories
Since his first programming ventures, Grimault has been interested in forms that circulate beyond the most well-trodden paths. In Bordeaux, he organizes screenings under the name Chercheurs d’ombres, before joining Monoquini, an association founded in Montpellier in the early 2000s. The project then becomes a meeting place for screenings, installations and visual or sound experiments.
After several years of growth in Montpellier, he brings the venture to Bordeaux, where he returns in 2008. The move to another city does not mean abandoning the original spirit: Monoquini remains committed to programming that gives close attention to atypical works and hard-to-classify forms. Its activities bring cinema into dialogue with other practices, seeking circulation rather than compartmentalization.
Grimault describes these offerings as “cinemas off the beaten track.” The expression captures his fondness for films that stray from established routes, whether experimental, underground or activist. Their appeal lies not only in their rarity: they shift our bearings and invite us to view film production from its margins.
His own history as a cinephile is shaped by decisive encounters with the big screen. David Lynch’s Eraserhead reveals the depths of the underground to him, while Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal turns a still-flickering interest into a lasting commitment. These discoveries say something about his relationship with cinema: a work can transform the way we see and reshape an entire sensibility.
The medium matters, too. Grimault remains attached to 35mm and photochemical processes, which he associates with a distinctive sensory experience. For him, film, with its grain and imperfections, is not simply a vehicle for the image: it plays a part in the image’s emergence and gives the eye a material to explore.
Film as an ecology of seeing
In an analog projection, the image has a physical presence that Grimault readily likens to a living stained-glass window. Light passes through the film, reveals its particles and makes the screening part of a precise apparatus. This materiality nourishes what he calls an ecology of seeing: an attentiveness to the very conditions in which images are produced and received.
This relationship with the medium runs counter to the rapid consumption of content. A screening demands time, receptivity and a certain trust in what is about to appear. A film may disorient us, interrupt our expectations or bring forth an emotion that cannot be explained straight away.
Attachment to film is not merely a matter of nostalgia. It also serves as a reminder that cinema involves gestures, tools and know-how, from programming to handling reels. The projectionist is not invisible: they play a part in the encounter between a work, a theater and an audience.
In this context, showing rare films becomes a form of transmission. Little-seen works find a space where they can be viewed in a new way, rather than existing only in archives or in the accounts of specialists. The screen then turns discovery into a collective event, without requiring everyone to share the same interpretation.
This openness also informs the way Grimault thinks about film history. The margins are not shameful appendices to a story already written: they are parallel trajectories, experiments that illuminate what the canon often leaves out. Bringing them to light broadens the scope of what we consider film history.
The city, too, can be read through films. Thom Andersen’s work on Los Angeles explores the metropolis’s place in the collective imagination, while his walks through certain neighborhoods observe the traces erased by urban development. The camera and walking become two ways of identifying what remains beneath the official façade.
Monoquini: artisanal publishing for forgotten voices
With Monoquini, the exploration extends beyond movie theaters. Grimault translates and publishes works by authors little known in France, with a particular interest in postwar North American literature. Writers associated with Beat and post-Beat sensibilities share the catalogue with filmmakers, poets and figures from the margins of publishing history.
The press’s two series give shape to this curiosity. One focuses on filmmakers’ writings and the links between the written word and the screen; the other brings forgotten authors, or those still little read in the French-speaking world, back into view. In both cases, the aim is to bring works into French that open up unexpected paths.
The publication of Dead Talk illustrates this approach. In Lynne Tillman’s short narrative, Marilyn Monroe speaks from beyond the grave and revisits, through fiction, her final night. The text had stayed with Grimault for a long time before he decided to translate it: publishing it becomes a response to his fascination, but also a way to introduce readers to a singular voice.
For him, translation requires a particular closeness to the text. It sometimes begins with a desire to better understand certain words or sentences, then turns into an extended stay in another writer’s world. To translate is to listen closely to words, seek their movement in another language and accept that the work involves a relationship that is both intellectual and emotional.
This intimacy continues in the design of each book. Grimault describes the editions as the product of a relationship with the texts and a rapport with their authors, even when they have long been gone. The layout, typography and illustrations are therefore not there to dress up content that is already complete: they extend its voice and offer a way of approaching it.
Handmade books designed as objects
Monoquini’s books are made using accessible means, including photocopying on recycled paper and risograph printing for covers or illustrations. These processes give the books an artisanal presence, marked by the textures and variations inherent in their making. They also make it possible to take back control of the tools of production.
Collaboration with graphic designers and workshops is an integral part of the project. Antoine Calafat has long shaped Monoquini’s visual identity, finding new ways to stage the texts from one title to the next. This continuity does not erase each volume’s individuality; on the contrary, it provides a framework in which every book can find its own form.
The print runs, often small, reflect practical constraints of time, money, energy and space. Making the books by hand calls for direct involvement, but this scale makes independent distribution possible. A small number of copies does not necessarily signal a desire to exclude; it also reflects the real conditions of publishing without a large-scale industry.
This economy echoes the spirit of the fanzine and the artist’s book. The volumes are intended to circulate, finding their way to booksellers and readers as opportunities arise, rather than filling warehouses. The object remains modest in price and production, while giving considerable importance to its material singularity.
Grimault thus champions a different idea of publishing value. Success is not measured solely by the number of copies printed, but by the possibility of a text finding its readers and continuing on its way. This approach contrasts with the logic of overproduction, in which thousands of volumes can be launched without any guarantee they will reach an audience.
The selection of texts gradually broadens his horizons. His attraction to postwar American culture remains strong, but the catalogue also welcomes authors from other parts of the world, and projects exploring new literary traditions are in the works. Publishing becomes a map in motion, attentive to connections rather than fixed borders.
Making room for the nonconformists
Whether programming a film or publishing a book, Grimault pursues the same goal: to make visible works that do not conform to dominant expectations. His work connects artists, texts, images and places, while preserving their strangeness. This coherence is not based on a doctrine, but on renewed attention to forms that defy easy classification.
Underground figures occupy an important place in this history. Tributes to collectors and exhibitors of rare films, as well as accounts of departed cultural intermediaries, remind us that culture often depends on people willing to take the risk of showing what the usual circuits ignore. Their work makes cinema an art of encounter, almost like a traveling fair, where discovery matters as much as the work itself.
This idea of transmission has a political dimension. Resisting erasure means keeping works and experiences available that do not serve dominant narratives. A rediscovered film or a translated book cannot, on its own, overturn the established order; nevertheless, it can shift the boundaries of what the public knows and imagines.
When it comes to Bordeaux, Grimault takes a critical view of the city’s transformation and the space left for cultural life. Behind the dazzling publicity, he fears that places will be given over to property interests and speculation. This assessment echoes his distrust of façades: whether urban, political or technological, they can conceal a far less welcoming reality.
Yet he remains convinced that art renews itself away from the spotlight. Isolated creators, programmers and collectives invent singular situations without seeking to please the gatekeepers. To find them, we must sharpen our attention: look beneath the surface, listen to faint voices and take seriously what does not promise immediate success.
Protecting spaces of freedom
Artaud’s words return, then, as an invitation not to confuse clear-sightedness with passivity. Recognizing the brutality of an era rules out neither creation nor action; instead, it compels us to ask where and how spaces of freedom can be preserved. For Grimault, film screenings and printed books are some of these fragile, tangible and shareable spaces.
These spaces need not be large. A theater showing an unfamiliar work, an edition of a few dozen copies or a translation that makes a voice accessible can shift the scale of our attention. Their reach is measured over time, in the discussions they spark and the connections they are able to forge.
The culture he champions does not seek to neutralize unease. It embraces enigmatic forms, challenging images and unsettling texts because they demand more than passive consumption. Rather than imposing an answer, these works open up a space where thought, feeling and dissent can meet.
This approach keeps one essential question at the forefront: who has the power to show, publish and pass things on? Working on a small scale, Monoquini responds through precise gestures, from selecting texts to making books, from programming to projection. In the grain of a strip of film as on a printed page, attentiveness remains a way of standing up to the surrounding noise.
When Grimault speaks of the present, he therefore does not separate beauty from responsibility. To see a work is also to recognize that it may disappear, lose its venue or be covered over by more powerful narratives. The gaze he cultivates turns toward these fragile traces, toward the flashes that remain amid the upheavals, and toward the works that continue to circulate on the margins.
By repeating these words of Antonin Artaud, Bertrand Grimault refuses both to idealize the present and to regret a past that might have been fairer. Every era bears its own violence, blind spots and mechanisms of oppression. Our own is no exception: beneath its technological veneer, it can distract as readily as silence, while wars and authoritarian rhetoric remind us how fragile freedoms are. Yet this clear-sightedness is no surrender. It makes it possible to look at the world directly and still search for gestures that open up cracks.
For Grimault, beauty is no promise of lasting salvation. It is perishable, intermittent, sometimes under threat. But it can offer shelter to those who still know how to perceive and defend it. A screening, a rare film, a translated text or a book made by hand then become more than cultural objects: they are shared experiences, ways of preserving an attentiveness to the world. Analog cinema, with its materiality and imperfections, particularly embodies this resistance to the rapid consumption of images.
This approach carries over into Monoquini’s publishing, devoted to singular voices and works that have remained on the margins. Translating a forgotten author, circulating a text in a small print run or programming a film outside the dominant circuits is a quiet challenge to uniformity. The point is not to claim that art can erase suffering, but to create places where the imagination stays active and other stories can be heard. Culture thus becomes a concrete practice of curiosity and independence, sustained by people who choose to pass things on rather than give in to discouragement.
Artaud’s words therefore resonate as a bleak assessment, but also as an invitation to remain vigilant. Though brutality runs through this era, spaces of creation, encounters and works continue to reveal unexpected possibilities. What remains is to sharpen our gaze and our listening so we can recognize these fragile, often subtle flashes that persist below the radar.
