What we behold trembles — yet still, we keep watch.
For its 38 edition, from 11 October to 21 November 2025, Festival Les Instants Vidéo stands against the night. There, video becomes a living, sensory and political material. It welcomes the invisible, the repressed, those on the margins or on the run. It breathes new life into damaged territories, burning archives and bodies that no longer accept being silenced.
In a world that drains the imagination, artists restore our sense of wonder. Through their works, they activate a critical and poetic memory of the world, resisting modern amnesia and dominant narratives. They seek slow forms, feverish forms, other languages.
This year, our artistic collective of five persons with diverse backgrounds and close ties to the festival carefully selected 124 works from 41 countries to make up the programme: 19 screenings, 3 exhibitions, 20 installations and 4 performances.
More than 28 partners (artistic organisations, festivals, cinemas, social and educational associations, etc.) are also making this collective adventure possible.
From 16 to 19 October, the festival in Friche la Belle de Mai will become a place of immersion, shared vigilance, hospitality and electronic poetry: the International Rencontres, the beating heart of the festival, will bring together artistic practices and human experiences.
The art works call on us to become, in turn, awakened bodies: seized, sensitive, critical. They will summon a poetic memory, a precious slowness, an attention to the world.
Three performances will punctuate these days, shaping the material (music, images, text, etc.).
We will affirm our videopoetic friendships and our desire for the free circulation of gazes and art works by also hosting two international festivals – VideoBardo (Argentina) and the Saigon Experimental Film Festival (Vietnam).
Encounters of another kind will further expand the boundaries:
- Residents of Marseille will open the festival with a programme put together over several months, accompanied by the IV team.
- Two authors will share their explorations of decolonial issues through a literature of the interstices.
- Six artists from the Tae’thir project (Tunisia, Egypt, Turkey, France, Morocco, Lebanon) will share their works, opening a dialogue on the intersections between creation and human rights.
Our escapades will also take us to Aix- Marseille University (Turbulence), Aix-en-Provence School of Art, and in Marseille to the Vidéodrome 2 cinema and two social organisations (ADPEI and Espoir Provence), which have been transformed for the occasion into ephemeral popular galleries – because art should live where we live.
Finally, our curiosity (to care) for the world will take us beyond borders, to Iran (Isfahan), Italy (Milan), Algeria (Algiers), Argentina (Buenos Aires), and up to Visualcontainer TV, where a selection of videos will be shown for a month to reach those who cannot join us.
The festival will not be a refuge, but a space to inhabit intensely, to experience fully.
A time and space for shared, urgent wakefulness.