“Imagine a film conceived to be that of immigrant workers. Not a film about , nor just for, a film of course with , but more deeply according to the workers. […] This film is called Le Lion, sa cage et ses ailes [The Lion, its Cage and its Wings]. It was an experiment launched in 1975 by the poet, dramatist and filmmaker Armand Gatti, conducted by Hélène Chatelain and Stéphane Gatti, with a resulting series of collective self-portraits by the communities of emigrant workers in Montbéliard, the industrial bastion of Peugeot.”*

For the centenary of the birth of Armand Gatti (1924 – 2017), the chamber of echoes is returning to this experimental fresco of the immigrant worker’s condition. Beside an extract from the film Le Lion, sa cage et ses ailes, you will find a selection of posters created and screen-printed by its participants. They bear witness to the various routes that were envisaged, taken or abandoned in the production of the film(s). They are accompanied by a frieze that narrates in black and white, with words and images, this participatory experiment that explored the relationships between poetry and politics, in which “the lion” designated the factory, “the cage” the town, and “the wings” the communities of immigrant workers.

In 1975, Armand Gatti put up a poster – “Un film : le vôtre” [A Film: Yours] – in the streets of Montbéliard, near the PSA Sochaux factory, calling on the town’s various communities to make this film collectively. Presenting this project nearly 50 years later, in the chamber of echoes, is a way to show not only its relevance to current events, but also the resonances of this method with the notion of cultural rights, whose first principle is to give people access to their own culture and that of others.