Annecy 2014 is renewing its partnership with Les Toiles Enchantées. On the bill: dreams and evasion.
Every year since 1997, Les Toiles Enchantées has been reaching out to hospitalised and handicapped children. Equipped with a big screen, projectors and lots of enthusiasm, two teams travel all over France, installing ephemeral theatres in hospitals and medical centres. This gives around 17,000 children the chance to take part in over 340 screenings and take a trip to a dreamland with a choice of around 50 recent films. That everyone is talking about, while they're talking about them, or even before!
Workshops are also organised so that the children can meet and have discussions with cinema professionals, during which the children take their turn and in becoming dream makers.
Creating a dream is what it's all about. When the lights go down and the screen lights up, these children are no longer sick or disabled, they're just simply kids, happy and mesmerised, like "the other" youngsters.
Truly "cultural treatments", Les Toiles Enchantées screenings help fight against isolation and despondence by creating gatherings and complicity.
For the duration of a film, the script changes; the sickness wanders off and a door is opened.