Film Facts:B13: Banlieue 13
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| A WORD ABOUT PARKOUR Parkour is a discipline from French origin that embraces the art of moving. Participants aim to pass obstacles in their environment, both natural and man made, rapidly and fluidly. One moves from A to B, in an uninterrupted forward motion, whether it is over, under, through or around an environmental object. Such movements may come in the form of jumping, climbing, running and other complicated skills. The key is to embrace the harmony between the obstacle and the individual, moving elegantly and beautifully. Participants of Parkour share a common goal to adapt to their environment and alter their movements in any situation, making it possible for any object to be overcome by human abilities. Parkour harmoniously combines physical agility and quick thinking, thus leading to improvisation. David Belle founded Parkour based on his father's beliefs in the "Natural Method of Physical Culture", which was developed by George Hebert. This method was commonly used by soldiers in combat. Belle constantly sought to apply his athletic insight towards practical uses to benefit his life. After he moved to Lisses, France and it was there that this phenomenon truly developed. He saw the town as an open space for free running. Enthusiastic practitioners soon began to follow. Those who practice Parkour are referred to as traceurs, a term which comes from French origin. Recently, Parkour's rising popularity has lead to various activities that stem from the original discipline. The term Freestyle Parkour has recently been coined to refer to activities that bare striking similarities to Parkour, yet incorporates unique movements, such as spins and flips, that are more choreographed and lay outside the realm that advocate and founder David Belle practices. Due to its varying movements, Freestyle Parkour is a controversial subject among many traceurs. |
| THE STUNTS OF DISTRICT B13 BY CYRIL RAFFAELLI & DAVID BELLE The most spectacular scenes of DISTRICT B13 were designed by the two leading male actors, David Belle and Cyril Raffaelli. The hardest part of their job was to reproduce on a film set actions that they generally do solo. David Belle: "Even the most extreme stunts I've been able to pull off in my demos, I did at times when I felt good and wanted to do them. But on this film, we were on a shoot where everything had been clearly mapped out ahead of time, and it was impossible to doubleback. You just can't come out and say, 'No, let's wait, I don't feel quite into it.' If you said that on D-Day, 'I'll do such-and-such', then you've got to do it. That's what I really learned: over and beyond physical qualities and the ability to perform feats, you have to be able to maintain the rhythm to the very end." Stunt, jump and climbing specialist, David found in Cyril an ideal partner, an old hand at film shoots thanks to the many roles as stuntman or stand-in he'd already played. Cyril: "I had been a martial arts choreographer on Taxi 2 and Mission Cleopatra. When Pierre Morel saw my work, he immediately had confidence in me. On the other hand, when I started work on DISTRICT B13, I really wanted to stick to the choreographies and action scenes in the script. The idea wasn't to make a demo but rather for each stunt to serve the story. It was an awesome job and a hell of a challenge!" The duo's goal: make sure that what happens on screen rings true, with real punches and shocks, just as can be seen in the Hong-Kong school. According to Cyril: "When they spoke to us about safety on the set, David and I showed them demo tapes with what we did live. In my demo, I do a somersault from one building to another, on the 15th floor. No mattress, no nothing. We have absolute confidence in ourselves. During the shoot, they explained to us that that they had to set up nets, mattresses and cables. We tried to negotiate, explaining that we had already done it without them. The production heads reminded us that we were the leading male actors and that if one of us got injured, the shoot was done for. So, at the outset, they said no to everything, but by dint of constant discussion, we finally managed to swing them over our way of thinking. And now that the film's in the can, what you see on screen, is 90% real without any special effects." David: "I don't really remember any scene at all which was really hard. Everything was so well prepared. It was more the stress, the fear of messing it up, not doing what you're told. But we rehearsed so much ahead of time that everything went like clockwork. The problem, if you get hurt, is that it blocks the entire crew, so you watch out. When you decide to make a jump, you have to be 100% sure and get everyone else to be equally confident. That's what you learn, certainty. In DISTRICT B13, the action scenes, chases and jumps, I was sure I could do them." |
| PRODUCTION NOTES: A resolutely contemporary action film, DISTRICT B13 arose from a script penned by Luc Besson and is directed by Pierre Morel. Chief cinematographer of many feature pictures, Pierre Morel, who was scouting for a project, found himself at the controls of DISTRICT B13 in December 2003. The shoot was interrupted for six months after the star Cyril Raffaelli got hurt. "One day," he explains, "I happened to be in Luc's office and he told me, 'here, read this and tell me if you'd like to direct this film.' I spent the night reading the script and phoned him back the next morning. I told him I was really excited about it, but wondered if I'd be up to the task. He answered, 'don't start by being disagreeable!' (laughter). We commenced preparation in January 2004." The first challenge of DISTRICT B13: the credibility of the fights and chases. Ever since Ong Bak: The Thai Warrior, the new reference in action/martial arts films, distributed by EuropaCorp, the bar has been set high. The casting of Leïto and Damien was therefore essential. David Belle, who was at the origin of Yamakasi and invented the concept of Parkour, a philosophy of action based on total mobility in an urban environment, was offered the part of Leïto. He has, moreover, many points in common with this character. To play Damien, the "untouchable" cop, the production company focused in on Cyril Raffaelli, specialist in precision stunts. He's been seen on screen in Taxi 2, Mortal Transfer, Mission Cleopatra and Kiss of the Dragon (where he plays Tchéky Karyo's sidekick). During their first meetings, Pierre Morel and Luc Besson quickly realized that they had come up with a dream pair. The film's preparation accelerated, for, much like the bomb in DISTRICT B13, the countdown had already begun. When the film's French theatrical release date was confirmed on November 10, 2004, the crew were still right in the middle of the shoot. Everything henceforth went very quickly. The first scenes to be shot were the comic sequences. After dozens of hours of grueling rehearsals which pushed them all to their very limits, David and Cyril thus became Leïto and Damien. Part of the exterior locations were shot in the gloomy housing projects of Romania: there, it is easier to obtain authorization to do stunts on the concrete towers. As the shoot advanced, the stunts became more and more complicated. Without stuntmen, or rather with actors doing their own stunts. Never before seen in France since the golden days of Jean-Paul Belmondo! To capture the ultra rapid actions, Pierre Morel filmed most of the stunt scenes and choreographies with a special high-speed camera, recording 150 frames/second instead of just 24, enabling the audience to "discover with a little more comfort. You can really see what's happening. Even if, in the end, during editing, we barely slowed down things," explains Pierre Morel. The shoot became more and more complex with each passing day to wind up with the biggest action scenes, notably an incredible shootout/fight inside a clandestine casino. Here, there was no room for improvisation and the stunts, rehearsed a thousand times over, had to be reproduced to the very fraction of an inch. Cyril Raffaelli: "It's extremely calculated, even if, when we shoot, there's always a certain freestyle aspect to it. During rehearsals, we never have access to actual shooting conditions. We don't know what the sets or lighting will be like. We try to be as near as possible to what things will be really like on D-Day. So, each time we come to the moment when 'Camera! Action!' is shouted out, we always feel a certain amount of stress and fear, because there's a whole crew waiting for the action to happen, so we don't necessarily get on with it exactly when we want to, but rather when we're asked to." A film at 1,000 miles an hour, DISTRICT B13 is nevertheless not some big, soulless machine, but rather a picture with a reasonable budget, carried along by a motivated crew. Morel: "We tried to make a film using as little technology as possible. It's more of a raw film, simple, old-fashioned and handmade." |
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