Original subtitles

Oh, the good “Te.

Without love.

Without worries Without problems.

Mmm, the good “Te.

You're alone You're free.

You're coasting along.

You enjoy.

Spending time.

With your friends.

Sleepless nights.

Which stretch out.

Into the early morning.

But the good “fie...

It's a movement, but techno is a revolution.

Yes, there was rock and punk,

but this social emancipation that coursed through music

which didn't tell you what to think

or how to think

was also pretty new.

Many were quick to understand that something crucial was happening.

It was able to develop into a fully-fledged culture

thanks to, or because of, big DJs and artists.

As a French, small-town raver,

he was the first icon of this type of music.

He doesn't just get into your head, he conceptualises,

then gets into your heart and makes it spread.

Sometimes you get there, and if you're tired or stressed,

you struggle to read the crowd and start off on the wrong record.

If I feel like I can't figure them out or they're not feeling it,

it's awful. Just awful.

If I don't manage to do it, it's awful.

But when things go well,

you forget about everything going on outside,

you forget about time, you forget about your problems.

We're all together.

And something really does happen.

The people and I become one.

We can keep going for hours and hours.

The aim is to get to a point where

we feel good together, we're on the same wavelength.

Those are the moments you have to look for

because they're unforgettable.

Some things, you don't forget.

What I need to know,

because I know there will be racks all over the place,

is the linear metres and the way it's split

because you know the collection isn't just...

It's not just 55,000 records stacked next to each other.

I mean, I've arranged the collection.

I went to check it out and arranged it in linear metres.

So, I know that I have 1.70 metres of funk EPs,

I have four metres of funk albums,

I have 1.10 metres of French pop, that kind of thing.

I already have a general idea of lengths and sizes.

That will determine how I'll move the collection.

I am already obsessing over

moving the collection and how it'll be re-arranged.

I keep hassling the architect, saying,

"Could you tell me which wall it's going on

"and how the CDs and vinyl will be arranged?"

Because I'm already calculating how many linear metres of funk I have,

how many linear metres of German techno, Detroit techno, jazz and reggae I have

and thinking: "This will go there, that will go there..."

It's insane.

So, the Year 9 students have a much more minimalist approach,

but it works well.

It's about trends.

Quentin, that's awesome.

People will come to the exhibition, clueless.

Afrika Bambaataa, not bad.

We'll see more of that with Year 10 doing hip hop which will tie in with...

The 808, that's sick.

They're Year 9 students, awesome!

That really is amazing.

We'll get to really know each other. Some of them come all the time.

There are four who are massive techno fans.

- They've made videos. - They were here this morning.

- They're great. - It'll be hard to get rid of them.

That girl is really interesting.

- She's the one with dreadlocks, right? - Yeah.

I know who "Dead Parents" is.

Her CD was all: "I'm gonna kill you, I'm gonna do you in."

But she's such a lovely girl.

Use it as inspiration when making your new-wave T-shirt.

I wrote about dark stuff, but I'm not dark.

I can't write about happy stuff.

But you're always laughing!

I don't get it. How does that work?

I don't either. All logic has gone out the window.

- There's no logic? OK. - No.

Find something similar to your CD

where you've got...

Maybe use one of the drawings from your CD.

Anything that's new wave tends to be a lot darker.

This is a much darker world.

With darker colours and pretty dark ideals, so go for it.

Does no image come to mind when you listen to music?

Any emotions?

Is there anything that makes you happy or sad?

It depends on the music.

I'm trying to find out what's going on in there.

Take five minutes, close your eyes and listen to the track.

Be alone with it and see where the track takes you.

Do you get lost in a maze? Does the sound make you angry?

Try to look for words that will help you with your work.

- You're saying you get lost in it. - Yeah.

I feel like I'm falling, in a way.

That could work, graphically.

Falling could be a drawing.

Yeah, but how?

I don't know. I'll draw some small circles.

I don't know. It's up to you to figure it out.

I think your teacher is looking for feelings

rather than something concrete.

It's about feelings, try to work with that.

I'll come back afterwards and we'll figure it out. OK?

Cool. Take five.

Listen to it loud, it's better.

There you go.

Someone has taken a liking to it.

His passionate side is really moving.

I feel the love behind all that passion.

I say to myself: "I'm sure he'll take a break,

"he must be tired after all this time", and he doesn't.

I'd turn up, his flag would be there and I'd be like: "Damn it, he was here!"

You know when you go to a concert venue, you see loads of stickers,

it feels like he's left a trail of stickers on everyone.

You're in China, feeling like the first to do a techno concert there

and someone says, "Laurent Garnier”,

and you're like, "OK, this guy's paved the way."

We talk about music.

That's what I like. You could be talking about anything,

such as management, etc.,

but, no, he takes in all his news.

If he gets 400 in a day, he'll listen to all of it.

It's seven in the morning.

Gotta get up.

Oh, I'm sleepy.

Let's put on some music to get going

I don't know something like:

I cleaned that one 50,000 times.

This is really good. Bloody hell!

Back then, the gay scene was really open to house and techno.

It's the scene that most embraced this type of music

during its infancy.

My professional life is closely linked to this club.

We met Christian and he already had English promoters organising parties.

I turned up with Eric Morand

and we told him we wanted to organise nights at his club

because we liked the venue and the sound.

He said yes 30 years ago and we've been going ever since.

Laurent's "Wake Up" parties were really the place

where we were able to invite

all the American actors we admired, and the European ones too, of course.

I wanted to showcase the whole music scene:

Trance, hardcore,

drum and bass, jungle, acid house, all sorts of styles.

Tonight, you'll be playing in front of Derrick May

and some of your idols from when you were 20.

- Are you feeling the pressure? - Shut up.

That culture blew me away.

There were 30,000 guys in a single room,

all dressed the same in tracksuits, ponytails and red glasses,

with blaring music.

When a culture establishes itself the way it did,

there's bound to be conflict. But to that extent?

A rave shouldn't be a drug party.

We're pretty sure that these organisers are operating like a mafia.

Electronic music concerts as well as raves

were demonised, singled out,

condemned, banned.

It was simply a space to be free.

I think that when there's a space where you can truly be free,

it means that it's not under control and that scares people.

People would meet at supermarket car parks

and set off in droves,

driving in a single file to go to some mysterious location.

This created a sense of the unknown which was completely new

and, by its very nature, caused panic

among the authorities, the middle-class,

family men didn't want their kids getting mixed up in that.

My family would call me an idiot.

My parents threw me out, saying I would become a homeless dealer.

Of course, the message that we were all drug traffickers

was quite something.

One in three dates were cancelled.

There would be countless times that I'd go to a venue

and there would be roadblocks.

It really was a witch hunt.

It was because certain people in power were scared stiff,

petrified,

and also ignorant.

We'd get there and say, "Hi, we want to do techno."

They'd reply,

"Whoa, we can't do techno. We're feeling the pressure.

"We're not supposed to rent out our space for barbaric music."

Apparently, techno music was barbaric.

You would want to organise something completely legal

and would invest a lot of time and money into it,

it would be important to you, your baby,

and then they'd turn around and say no.

When you asked why, they'd say, "Just because."

The Prefecture's Safety Commission will not stop splitting hairs.

After ordering that 3, 660 chairs be fastened to the floor,

they must now be attached to each other.

Either way, we're doing it.

After two days of harassment, detection is kicking “m.

They're doing this just to screw with us.

Their anti-techno plan is a joke.

If I don't play in France, I'll just go play elsewhere.

It's fine, it doesn't bother me if they shut the country off.

Techno's blowing up in France cos they're becoming more opposed to it.

Tell a child not to play with a socket and he'll electrocute himself.

When they started talking about volume levels, they showed two CDs:

Classical music, which was good,

it was music that wouldn't kill your kids' eardrums.

Then they showed Laurent Garnier which was in the red zone.

If some guy turns the bass right up, of course it'll be in the red zone.

They said my music would make kids deaf, that's what they said on TV.

If classical music were on full blast, that would make you deaf too.

It depends on the volume. That was such a cop-out excuse.

Rather than march and chant,

"Techno's cool, shove it up your arse", which doesn't interest me,

I'd rather work with people who are quirky and different,

people who are promising, artistically speaking, in France,

to get our own back.

With an estimated turnover of 15 million this year

and over hundreds of Wes,

F Communications is exploring the Whole spectrum of electro music.

It saw rising success With this track,

music from an ad for a jeans manufacturer.

We came onto the scene in 1999 with Mr. Oizo's Flat Beat.

We sold three or four million singles in just a few weeks.

Yes, it contributed to the explosion, you had a French artist

topping European charts for weeks on end.

All this pop and charts stuff was something I didn't even know existed.

When people started telling me what was happening with that track,

an educated guy like Laurent,

who had been following the entire evolution of this genre,

understood exactly what was going on. I didn't have a clue.

I didn't know what MTV was.

In a nutshell, I was so lost and was in way over my head,

so it was more of a burden than a blessing.

Laurent Gamier, Stardust, Cassius or Mr. 017.0,

names which you may have never heard,

and yet from New York to Tokyo, from Milan to London,

they're making people dance and are making the front pages.

French rock never managed to cross the borders,

but today, disc jockeys, or DJs, as they say now,

and techno producers are exporting.

Spearheading this French invasion is Daft Punk,

a duo who have sold over 1.5 million albums.

Without ever having shown their faces.

Whatever you thought of this movement,

it was catching on.

Daft Punk offered something that was...

It had the pleasures of techno with its sound and synths, etc.,

but the instant gratification of something like Michael Jackson.

That's what was crazy, but it annoyed a lot of people.

There were many who felt their music was being violated by trash

because it was too commercial, I don't know.

It was something we'd talk a lot about back in the day.

It was precisely so that techno music would come out from the shadows,

from the fringes, from exile, from demonisation

and have a rightful place in the streets,

in the capital, in Paris.

We're in Bologna, in Italy. I'm on the crapper.

And, uh,

we're going to party hard.

Anything that breaks away from the norm,

inevitably causes fear and concern.

And as usual, since it's always cyclic,

at some point, it ends up becoming institutionalised.

It's a logical, normal progression.

The amazing thing, and this goes for all musical trends,

is that with these trends, amid the initial confusion,

people emerge, particular artists emerge

who, in a way, clear up any confusion about the movement.

Techno, house, what's known as electro now in France,

became a fully-fledged culture, like jazz, rock and hip hop,

because it was the soundtrack of several generations of artists.

I was at the conservatory on weekdays and at clubs on weekends.

That's how it was.

When I met Laurent Garnier, as I said, I was 16 or 17,

and I brought him my electro music demo tapes,

which was more techno back then.

He very kindly said to me, "That's cool, but it really sounds like Daft Punk."

I copied Daft Punk way too much around 1996.

But I was so happy that he'd listened to my stuff and gotten back to me.

It also taught me not to copy people I admire when creating music.

If I found my style, it was thanks to his feedback at the time

which was important to me.

This is my first time here, so it's the great unknown.

The complete unknown.

I'm playing tonight at a club called Bassiani.

This isn't just any old trip.

I'm kind of stressed, actually.

Weirdly enough, it's stressing me out.

But I like coming to these types of places.

Bassiani is the spot in town which plays 140 bpm.

Clubbers go to Bassiani

because it's an act of defiance.

This is because you can meet people at the bar or on the dancefloor

who talk about the various struggles for civil rights in Georgia,

for LGBTQ rights,

but that could also include the few rights minors have in Georgia.

People talk here and that's what scares the authorities.

The dancefloor becomes political

because it's a place where people have conversations.

There was a special forces police raid

right in the middle of a set.

Clubbers saw 250 heavily-armed guys storm into the club

on a supposed drug bust.

Techno, drugs...

A natural leap, apparently.

People's reactions around Bassiani,

so, not just clubbers, but various activists,

was to meet in front of Parliament on Rustaveli Avenue in Georgia.

There were around 10,000 to 15,000 people there

blasting out music in the street.

It's not dissimilar to the Champs-Élysées or Times Square,

so that place is a pretty big deal.

They staged musical protests for two days

in front of Parliament.

It's very important to preserve this heritage

which provides an area for freedom

because we all need an escape.

We all need moments where we can be ourselves,

express ourselves without being judged.

The youth says fuck you to the National Front.

The youth says fuck you to the National Front.

You know, when Laurent mixes,

thousands of people from all walks of life,

all with their own personal world-views,

peacefully come together.

That's political. That's extremely political.

When it comes to the evolution of music, I often compare it to chaos theory.

In other words, it's never where you expect it to be.

There is no logical evolution.

I think about reverse polarity, about making music without electricity.

That would be the most revolutionary thing,

to make extremely acoustic music with a very modern vision.

Music that's totally innate, organic, spiritual.

That would do us good.

Any movement creates a counter movement.

Alternatively, musicians will get inspiration from the past,

but completely reinvent it.

It's almost impossible to predict.

Thanks for bringing the festival-goers, it's revamped the castle.

I didn't do it, the guys did.

That's what has revamped us.

You're terrific.

So, I'm...

I hope I don't injure you.

It's an instrument of torture.

It's an awful instrument, that bit is.

I said to Laurent earlier

that the first decoration I awarded, as a budding Minister of Culture,

was to Rostropovich.

From Rostropovich to Laurent Garnier...

With Miles Davis in between. Yes, sorry.

I was very clumsy, I still am, plus, I injured myself.

Rest assured, I'm being careful.

So, I dug it into his jacket...

There was an actual pool of blood.

Rostropovich was like: "Look, don't worry about it,

"we'll wash it off with vodka."

So, I'm going to be very careful.

On behalf of the President

and by virtue of the authority vested in me,

I pronounce you a Knight of the Legion of Honour.

Subtitles: Babel Subtitling - babelSUB.be