Underneath
Ugo Arsac
2020 - 50 min - Couleur - France

Two men are walking down a pathway surrounded by concrete and steel. Can something be found far from public scrutiny, away from the never-ending swarming of everyday life?
One day, I hear of a man who gets himself a rope and goes and unrolls it from the top of a bridge into a stairwell, into a hole. He climbs the rope up and down again and again. I have long followed him since. The quiet pathway unfolds in the darkness of subterranean Paris. Tunnels, galleries, sewers.
Drawn by the same desire for record keeping and confronting depth, we have gone through the city’s forsaken organs, arteries, and limbs. Immersed in the layers of this engine, we have come across some internal breathing.
I have accompanied him on his dantesque journey, a discreet Virgil drawing at every step an overview that penetrates the bowels of this metropolis.