After the trying constraints of lockdown and social distancing that brutally reduced urban space to its strict minimum, making it into a place where isolated individuals merely cohabit, Homo Urbanus is a cinematic odyssey offering a vibrant tribute to what we have been most cruelly deprived of: namely, public space.
Taking the form of a free-wheeling journey around the world (10 films, 10 cities, 10 hours of films), the project invites us to observe in detail the multiple forms and complex interactions that exist every day between people and their urban environments.

Somewhere between visual anthropology and observational cinema, these films put urban man under the microscope and encourage us to take a closer look at individual and collective behaviour, interpersonal dynamics, social tensions, and the economic and political forces that play out every day on the grand stage of the city streets.

Walking in unknown cities to collect impressions, to catch a vibration, to gather situations and things seen at the angle of a street, on a crossroad, from the top of a building. Depicting a city in its present, in the simplicity of its daily life. Listening to its rumble, the sound of its depths. Slipping into its rhythm. To be on the lookout, in a continuous wonder towards the imagination and creativity men have managed to develop to find a way to live together. Asking ourselves what makes a city, trying to understand its silent rules, its habits, its imperfections, its difficulties, and its unique way to answer the endless question: Where do we go?
Aimless navigation without a compass, without a map, in the territory of the city, seeking for snatches of daily life, gestures, places, scenes that make a city what it is. Visual notes on what we scarcely look at: our ordinary urban practices, customs and habits, our behaviour, everything that escapes us and speaks of us, the inhabitants of our cities.

These films explore our condition as a human animal and the way in which the city—this artificial environment that we build around us every day like an extension of our contemporary bodies—shapes and conditions us. Taken on the fly, these visual notes look at urban man not only within his group but also in the depths of his solitude, redesigning the outlines of the city according to a kind of emotional geography. More than mapping out an area, the idea is to allow a city to speak through the ways in which it is used, in order to show the shifting nature of its human landscape and to understand what local singularities remain in the context of the wholesale globalisation of our urban lifestyles. By assembling these different films, this installation looks at cities as unique responses to the global challenge of living together.

Homo Urbanus is a city-matograhic odyssey by Bêka & Lemoine also in the form of a touring exhibition. Shown in Bordeaux, Prague, Berlin, Sao Paulo, Graz, Barcelona, among others, the exhibition translates their latest mega-project, a free-wheeling journey around the world (10 films, 10 cities, 10 hours of films), as an immersive environment, offering a vibrant tribute to what we have been most cruelly deprived of in times of lockdown and social distancing: namely, the public space.

With their latest mega-project, Homo Urbanus, Bêka & Lemoine stepped up their game, exploring the urban realm with their signature wit and humor, inviting us to observe the multiple forms and com- plex interactions that exist every day between people and their urban environments in detail.

Through aimless navigation without a compass, without a map, in the territory of the city, Bêka & Lemoine seek for snatches of daily life, gestures, places, scenes that make a city what it is, depicting it in its present, in the simplicity of its daily life, listening to its rumble, the sound of its depths - slipping into its rhythm.

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