Launched in May 2026, the programme “Une heure avec…” (“An Hour with…”), organised by the association Litterallea, offers an exchange with figures from the worlds of culture, science and society. This series of events brings together people from Germany, France and across Europe around shared themes.
Close reading of the city
This event around Nirsa’s film Lumière is part of the artistic research project Lire Marseille (d’)après agents étrangers (“Reading Marseille (After) Foreign Agents”), which explores the city through the texts and perspectives of those who have passed through it. The film takes as its starting point Walter Benjamin’s Hashish in Marseilles, and in particular its miniature “Lumière”. It sets up a dialogue between the Marseille described by Benjamin, the drawings made decades later by Nirsa’s father on the basis of that account, and images of the city filmed today.
The screening will be followed by a discussion of these different ways of seeing and narrating Marseille, and of what changes – or remains – over time.
In conversation with Nirsa and Pavel Arsenev