Film Screening: World Station

As part of our closing conference on ‘Religion and Urbanity’, taking place from 1 to 5 June, we will be screening the new film ‘Gare du Monde’ [World Station] by Jacques Lévy, a former and highly esteemed KFG fellow, on Wednesday 3 June.

The performance is open to the general public and will take place at Brunnenkirche in Erfurt on June 3, 2026, at 6:00 PM.

This 2025 work centres on the ‘Gare du Nord’ railway hub in Paris, which is explored in an investigative manner with the help of dancers. In this vast yet compact space, curious explorers brush past people and help us understand the mysteries of coexistence.

The aim of the project was to show how researchers are striving to understand what the Gare du Nord actually is: Europe’s largest railway hub, both a world unto itself and a miniature model of the World. Can the station’s gigantic machinery be tamed by those — travellers, workers, passers-by —who set it in motion? This is the question posed by the researchers… who happen to be dancers.

The film takes on a dual challenge: to do without the overarching voice-over so common in documentaries; and to aim for a rigour of exposition and argumentation at least equal to that of a scientific essay. The solution is found in a narrative, told through images, sounds and movements, that makes the phases of observation, modelling and conceptualisation clear. In a combination typical of any research work, blending inductive and deductive approaches, intuitions emerge at the same time as hypotheses are tested.

The task of communicating research findings to the public is one that researchers-dancers finally face, and this leads to a few surprises that highlight the essential role of outreach. Ultimately, it is the concept of ‘inhabiting’ that is both explored and harvested, both in the research recounted by the film and in the film itself.

The fiction-science film World Station is a manifesto for experimental cinema. Following Urbanity/ies (2013), the Thinking Places series (2015) and Paris sera un jour Paris (2021), Jacques Lévy demonstrates through example how languages usually associated with the arts —such as cinema, contemporary dance and contemporary music — can also become stimulating resources for scientific invention.

Jacques Lévy is Honorary Professor of Geography and Urban Planning at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL) and Member of Chôros (www.choros.place) He is also co-editor of the journal EspacesTemps and author of Atlas politique de la France. Les révolutions silencieuses de la société française (Autrement, June 2017). In 2018, he received the Vautrin-Lud Prize, the highest international distinction in geography.

English version, 44 min.

The team

Cinematography: Thomas Bataille

Sound: Frédéric Bouvier

Choreography: Benoît Bar

Music: Dzovinar Mikirditsian

Editing: Camille Uliana

Colour grading: Emmanuel Fraisse

Sound mixing: Jeanne Grivelet

Assistant director: Louise Vandeginste

Concept and direction: Jacques Lévy

A Chôros production

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