Fête des Lumières 2019 - My first nights at the Festival of Lights (Ep. I)

When asking French people “Which day of the year is the most important day to your culture?”, most of them may reply “The National Day (14 July)” or “Christmas day”. For the Lyonnais, “La fête des lumières” is equally important to those two festive days.

I’ve heard about this festival for many years but have never experienced it. This year is the 30^th anniversary of the city lighting plan, and since I moved to the area, I made a promised to myself that I wouldn’t miss it again. 

Thank you message to Virgin Marie in Saint-Nizier Church

As claimed by many Lyonnais, the Festival of Lights which is held annually from the 5^th – 8^th December  was originally created in 1643 when people lit the candles to thank Virgin Mary for saving Lyon from the plague attack. However, according to many researches I made, the origin of this festival is way more complicated than that. So if you are interested to know more, please feel free to learn it yourself here. 😛 (Caution: French content)  

Let’s get back to the lighting shows. As far as I’ve heard, there were tons of people visited the festival each year. So the only suggestion that I got from the experts was “Avoid Friday and Saturday nights”. So I decided to join the festival on Thursday, the 5^th and Friday, the 8^th December that is considered as the most important day for the Lyonnais, the day they put the lit candles in the windows.

This year, there were 36 installation works in the distance of 10 kilometers or so (some of them were at the airport though!). I was totally aware that I wouldn’t have enough time to see all of these works within two nights. Anyway, I would try to manage my time the best I could. And thanks to my boyfriend’s mom, Sylvie Colon who was a part of an installation team, I had a chance to “pre-visit” the installation that she has worked on (so I could see other works on the set dates – Hehe!) This work is called “Lucioles” with a concept of fireflies. There were hundreds of small colourful lights nesting together, some of them were hanging from the trees, and some were clinging on the quay on the side of Rhône River [video].

"Luciole"s on the quay of Rhône

'"Lucioles" nests on the trees

"Lucioles" under the bridge

Another piece of work that I already took a peek before the premier night is named “Lianes”. It was represented as a group of lianas climbing on the buildings, electric poles and trees in the old town area. These two installations are the fruits of Erik Barray, a pre-eminent willow artist of Lyon city.

"Lianes" clinging on the uphill wall

"Lianes" on the way to Fourvière

"Lianes" side by side with the moon

On the first night of the festival, after a quick dinner and a brief plan, my friend and I took the subway to Place Bellecour Station. Once we reached to the street level, I was astonished by a gigantic work spreading around the plaza where the statue of Louis XIV is, on his horse. A group of huge illuminated look-alike balloons in forms of fish were floating in the air over Place Bellecour square. Represented in the name of “Prairie éphémère”, underneath those fish, fluorescent prairie changed its colour from time to time (along the music, I guess) [video]. I was totally astonished by this work and would rate 10/10 with no hesitation. Then I wanted to rate 20/10 once I saw what happened behind the production line. The flying fish were controlled and manipulated to dance in the air by the installation crew. It was quite cold on that day (2-4 °C, as far as I remember). So I utterly admire the puppeteers who were staying there, under the cold for the whole night, during 4 hours.

“Prairie éphémère” at Place Bellecour

All the fish are flying over the square.

The fluorescent prairie seems to be even real when it turns into green.

The puppeteer is controling the flying fish along with the music.

At the same square, there was a moderate-size installation with tubes of white neon light surrounding around a sign made of vinyl (I guess) written the word “Welcome” in different languages: Bienvenue, Benvenuto, Willkommen, etc.  I believed that it’s a sign made by the city hall in order to greet the tourists. But when I looked up in the festival map that my friend and I grabbed from a coffee shop, we looked at each other sadly. I terribly feel sorry for the city who gave the budget for creating this…ummm… neon sign and called it an installation work, under the name “Tower”. We noticed that there were three of…ummm…them. (The other two were at Place des Cordeliers and Place Louis Pradel.)

The installation "Tower" at Place Bellecour

It was such an overwhelming feeling for me to see the most magnificent and the most “humble” works, one right after another. We continued our adventure, heading to the Saône River where exist groups of small houses and buildings on the hill as a background. We had to stop our walk once we saw a huge human wave that covered the entire bridge. On the other side of the river bank, a projection mapping “Les Cueilleurs de Nuages” (or so-called Clouds Keepers) was being animated over the whole facade of Fourvière Hill. After had failed from squeezing myself into the crowd to see the show closer and better, a shorty like me had to climb up on a bench to have a better but further view.

The crowd at Quai des Célestins

“Les Cueilleurs de Nuages” from far distance

Despite having seen it twice, I couldn’t understand well the story. I then gave up, climbed down from the bench and headed toward Vieux Lyon or the old town area. In front of Temple du Change which once was a marketplace in the old day, dazzling lightings were blinking and changing their colours almost every 10 seconds. To our eyes, it looked like the lights were insanely spinning on the facade. It was giddily fun to look at this “Flower Power” show with a wind blowing sound as a background noise. Too bad that the restaurant behind us played the music so loud that we could hear the wind sound only during the moment they changed the music [video]. Anyway, in my opinion, this work was better called Windmill Power than Flower Power though. 😆

“Flower Power” in font of Temple du Change

Colourful light wheels are spinning with a wind blowing sound effect

Still keeping our track in the old town area, in front of Gadagne museum, a long line of people was waiting to get into the building. Checking on the map with my friend, it seemed like the installation called “Nocturne” was performed inside here. Truly knew that if we had waited in the line, we wouldn’t have had enough time for other shows, so my friend and I continued our march until we arrived at Saint-Jean-Baptise Cathedral where my friend claimed that its last-year show was splendid.

Tight crowd in front of Saint-Jean-Baptise Cathedral

In front of the crowd, the projection mapping “Genesis” was playing on the surface of the cathedral. When we arrived there, the show was almost over, so we waited for an encore of the mapping. In the second round, we saw the story from end to end. The origin of all living things was displaying colourfully and gracefully with the background music on the surface of the building. I would rate this work 6/10 for its esthetic aspect. For those who have never seen or didn’t see much projection mapping works, they might be admired this show. As a person who has seen many pieces of mapping work, I was quite upset with this work. Why? Because the creator team didn’t create many images that fit solely the surface of the Saint-Jean Cathedral which is supposed to be a unique characteristic of the projection mapping.

“Genesis” Mapping on the facade of Saint-Jean-Baptise Cathedral

It’s 11 pm. sharp. The first night of the festival has ended. We waited until the crowd faded from the area to walk back home. Spending 3 hours on the street allowed us to see only 5 pieces of the installation (if the “Tower” and the far-distance mapping were counted in this case). It was cold and calm after many visitors have gone. Leaving behind was a group of lights whose shapes were like hot air balloons, hanging over Rue de la République Road. The blue colour from the lamps crated a big contrast with the intense red from those street lights. Writing to this line, I’ve just learnt that this was another installation work called “Les amours en cage” (Loves in Cage) which was an interactive work. Too bad that I hadn’t known this before or I would have tried activating it. So this was technically counted as the 6^th work I’ve seen that night – Whoopee! I threw myself in bed, pondering the time management I had, telling myself that on the 8^th I must visit other beautiful installations as much as I could.

“Les amours en cage” on Rue de la République Road

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CLICK HERE for Ep.2