Since 2002, Nuit Blanche has set Paris ablaze: every year, for one memorable and always unique night, the capital is transformed into a gigantic open-air museum. Performances, installations, exhibitions, concerts, shows, playful or unusual happenings:contemporary art in all its forms takes pride of place during the evening.
The next edition of this Nuit Blanche is scheduled for Saturday, June 6, 2026. This time again, expect standout artistic encounters and unexpected happenings. While Paris hosts the bulk of the event, art isn’t confined to the City of Light.
On June 6, we head to Villejuif (Line 7 of the metro) to enjoy fresh and captivating contemporary art performances.
This town in the Val-de-Marne region of France is alive with sporting and cultural events all year round, designed for young and experienced residents alike. The town is home to two conservatories, a theater and a cultural and civic center open to all. During this Nuit Blanche, Villejuif surprises us with a highly unexpected program...
Municipal School of Fine Arts
In front of the entrance to the Beaux-Arts, the iconic 1960s Ford Mustang 184 from the film A Man and a Woman welcomes visitors: emblematic of the director’s philosophy, speed as the language of desire, movement as the only way to love.
The Engine and Love
Claude Lelouch’s cinema is defined by passion, sincerity, audacity—his dazzling love stories, his romantic view of existence, the sometimes cruel beauty of chance and coincidence.
What ties all these films together is an intimate belief: you only meet love in motion. Never standing still. Love is the reward for those who dare to rush forward—by car, in flight, in dance, in music. His characters are always people in motion. Not superheroes, not villains—he loves the everyday. The engine is never an end in itself: it’s the courage to move toward the other. Because stopping, for Lelouch, is a little like dying. And to love is first to dare rush toward the other.*
When you’re a man of action like me, you go full speed. You glance a bit in the rearview, but not too much. Claude Lelouch,
This instinct to charge forward would culminate in A Man and a Woman. At the creation of this seventh feature, a despairing Lelouch, following a string of cinematic failures, heads out from Paris at night. The road leads him to Deauville. At dawn he spots a woman walking on the beach with her child, a car bearing down toward her… and the seed of a script takes root.
It was a date (1976) — Philosophy in its purest form
Nine minutes. A single long take. Early morning Paris on August 15, 1976, still sleepy and empty. A car tears through the city at breakneck speed—red lights ignored, no-turn signs dismissed, pigeons scattering in panic on Place du Tertre. And at the end of the journey, on Montmartre hill: the rendezvous with a woman.
This short film may be the work where Lelouch’s philosophy is revealed in its most pristine form. No dialogue. No narrative. Just a roaring engine, a city traversed like a declaration of love, and the certainty that someone is waiting for you. No tricks—you have to arrive on time with the 300 meters of film stock available. The film is an equation in images: the engine pounds, the action proves, love rewards.
Love that drives you crazy, defying traffic rules. The one who’s eager to love is not at risk of an accident. Claude Lelouch, about Was It a Memory?
Bolero — The Uns and Others (1981) — The Absolute Synthesis
In The Uns and Others, Lelouch follows four families—Russian, French, German, American—across three generations, from the interwar years to the 1980s. All are bound by a single thread: love of music and dance.
The entire film exists only to realize its final scene: nineteen minutes of Ravel’s Boléro, choreographed by Maurice Béjart, danced by Jorge Donn on the Trocadéro plaza before two thousand spectators. A single, endlessly repeated melody that rises inexorably—as if there were only one human story, rehearsed from generation to generation with the same urgent ardor.
I listened to my film before I saw it, and I realized the Boléro’s central importance. It would be at the heart of the mise en scène, since it is the heartbeat of humanity that the film captures. Claude Lelouch,
Jorge Donn wasn’t a master of dance technique. But he had something better: an absolute presence, an authenticity that shone through the screen. Exactly the “smell of truth” that Lelouch has hunted for years.
The Boléro presented is a second cut by Claude Lelouch made for the symphonic-film event held at the Palais des Congrès to celebrate his 60-year career in November 2022..
Installation — The Sincerity of Gazes
The final space of this immersion is devoted to gazes. This setup was designed and realized with the help of the apprentices from Lelouch’s cinema workshops.
On several screens simultaneously, fragments from Lelouch’s work capture those moments when an actor stops acting and communicates something real. That is the “smell of truth”: the elusive moment when the boundary between fiction and life disappears.
To achieve these flashes of authenticity, Lelouch uses almost clandestine methods: giving actors the script in the morning to perform in the afternoon, filming without notice, shooting in a single take in real locations. Surprise creates truth. Movement unlocks emotion.
There’s a radio frequency between people who love each other. My job is to tune my camera to that frequency. Claude Lelouch,
Interactive screens — Trailers Exhibition — 60 years of love for cinema, 51 films!
Trailers are films in their own right in Lelouch’s cinema. Each person can choose the trailer(s) they want to watch. Each film represents a particular love
Love as Destination
Lelouch has often said life is the greatest screenwriter. Its eight billion inhabitants supply eight billion different scenarios. But deep down, for him, all these scenarios tell the same story: someone rushing toward someone else with all their energy, velocity, and love.
The engine pounds. The action proves. The music carries. The gaze reveals. And now, thanks to the masterclass, you know it from the inside: love on screen isn’t a cinema illusion. It’s life captured in the moment by someone who, more than sixty years ago, decided never to stop chasing it.
At the end of this movement—at the end of the night road in A Man and a Woman, at the end of the Paris crossing in It Was a Date, at the end of the nineteen minutes of Boléro, at the end of your own improvised scene with him—there’s always someone waiting. That’s Claude Lelouch’s cinema. A rendezvous. And this rendezvous, today, is with you.
Three seconds of happiness can justify sixty years of headaches. Claude Lelouch,
A Conversation Without a Net
Claude Lelouch will lead an exceptional masterclass alongside Jean Ollé-Laprune and Yves Allion, co-authors of his book Le Cinéma, c’est mieux que la vie. True to the spirit of his cinema—unscripted, without fixed formulas—he shares his approach, his relationship with actors, the birth of his films, the crucial role of music, and the ongoing hunt for the “perfume of truth.”
There is one thing no one else can do. It’s Claude Lelouch, live, explaining to you how he creates love on screen. Why he shoots his own scenes. Why he sometimes gives every actor a different line. Why he picks the music before he even knows what he’ll film.
As part of this all-nighter, Claude Lelouch will host an extraordinary masterclass with Jean Ollé-Laprune and Yves Allion, co-authors of Le Cinéma, c’est mieux que la vie — a live, open, candid conversation in his own spirit: unfiltered, unscripted, with the audience as partner. Because only Lelouch can Lelouch.
Only those who act exist. Claude Lelouch,
Nothing is prewritten
At the core of the masterclass, Lelouch presses his deepest conviction: in life as in cinema, nothing is planned in advance. The ending is never known. The screenplay is not a roadmap—it’s at best a starting point. What matters is what happens along the way: an actor misdelivering a line and revealing something truer than the text, a last-minute change in lighting, a passerby stepping into the frame uninvited.
These accidents, these derailments of reality—Lelouch does not fight them. He welcomes them. He hopes for them. He treats them as gifts.
Chance is God traveling incognito. Claude Lelouch,
That line sums it up. To Lelouch, chance isn’t a threat to the story—it's its most precious gift. Chance is life intruding on a shoot.
He calls these moments “miracles.” Not in a religious sense, but in the cinematic and human sense: those seconds when something happens before the camera that should never have happened, will never happen again, and contains more truth than hours of preparation. A tremulous gaze. A hesitant smile. A silence that says it all. These are the miracles Lelouch spends his life tracking—camera on the shoulder, eyes wide open, ready to capture the unpredictable.
I believe in miracles. I’ve witnessed a few. And most times, I didn’t know I was making one until it happened. Claude Lelouch,
That’s why his masterclass won’t resemble any other. He won’t arrive with ready-made answers or fixed formulas. He’ll come with curiosity, with attention, and with that inner disposition he’s always had: to be ready for something unexpected to occur. Including in this room. Including with you. Everyone arrives with their own mood and the day’s feelings.
Creating together and creating live: improvised scenes
The masterclass unfolds in two acts. First, Lelouch shares his free-form figures—the moments when he drops the script because life offers something more beautiful than he planned.
In the second act, he invites the audience and a few surprise guests to join the dance. With volunteers from the room, he improvises small love scenes using his method: no prepared lines, no rehearsals, no pre-staged setups. A loose outline, an emotion to reach, and the camera rolling. Chance does the rest. The miracle may well happen.
I treat my actors the way life treats me: with surprises, incomplete information, and the certainty that the essential will happen in the moment. Claude Lelouch,
A living archive
These improvised scenes will be filmed. Some, if they carry that perfume of truth Lelouch recognizes at first sight, may join the living archive of the exhibition. The audience won’t just watch — for one all-night stretch, they’ll become part of a Lelouch-esque love story. A story whose ending no one, not even he, can predict in advance.
The entire masterclass will be broadcast live on the city’s YouTube channel and recorded to be shown in the school throughout the evening.
A signing session
At the end of the interactive experience, a signing session will be hosted by Librairie Points Communs with Claude Lelouch, Jean Ollé-Laprune, and Yves Allion for the book Le Cinéma c’est mieux que la vie.
That was a rendezvous staged with the remaining 300 meters of film from If I Had to Do It Again (1976). 300 meters, barely 10 minutes of film!
The exhibition dedicated to A Man and a Woman presents an original copy of the film. Images shot on 3.5 cm stock become, in projection, images of 10 meters… that’s part of the magic of cinema!
In a nod to this technique that disappeared with digital but which still underpins most of Claude Lelouch’s films, the Municipal School of Fine Arts offers a workshop that lets you try your hand at cutting and splicing 35 mm film.
Here, the School invites everyone to grasp the materiality of the film with the 35 mm splicer. It’s your turn to compose and create what was the soul of cinema—the moving image! At the end, before you head off with your creation, please be kind and rewind!
Maison pour tous Jules Valles
Micro-Folie La Villette Villejuif ; Credits: La Villette White Night edition dedicated to love
La Micro-folie de Villejuif, dressed up especially with creations designed during participatory workshops in the fablab with Villejuif residents, welcomes you to this edition of Nuit blanche devoted to love. A digital museum exhibition on the theme of love
Works from the Micro-Folie Museum collections will be on view throughout the evening. A Mail Art Workshop: Writing about Love, led by Diane Lombardo
Create your own Love Envelope or Love Letter using inks, nib pens, and a host of decorative elements; you can write, illustrate, and creatively personalize your message, addressed to the recipient of your choice
The Envelopes and Letters created may be displayed around the Love Bench during White Night, before being picked up by their authors the following week.
The Utopian Ball by La Presque Compagnie
LA PRESQUE COMPAGNIE invites you to take over the dance floor for a night of shared dancing that’s passionate, wild, intergenerational, offbeat, and utterly utopian!
Between timeless standards, moodier electro, and collective or solo choreographies, the evening crafted by Charlotte Rousseau is led by one DJ and two performing dancers. The Utopian Ball; Credits: The Utopian Ball The Pocket Club
Experience a unique, totally original vibe with a total immersion in a mini-discotheque where you’ll pick the decades you want to dance to. With its selfie box, you’ll leave with a memorable memento of this festive, quirky moment. pocket club; Credits: pocketclub “Tell Me About Love” - Improvisation show by Cadavres Exquis company
Part duel, part performance, the two actors Véronic Joly & Olivier Descargues play with language and the situations around this major theme in literature, theater, poetry, and song. A participatory, all-ages show, “Tell Me About Love” aims to be playful, funny, and virtuoso. tell me about love; Credits: cadavre exquis The Bench of Love – by Diane Lombardo of the Artemis association
Created during workshops with residents, it is built mainly from reclaimed objects and materials, transformed collectively. This poetic installation celebrates Love in all its forms.
The Bench of Love invites you to sit, as a couple, with family, or with friends, and to immortalize the moment with the photo setup provided.
You can also contribute to the artwork by hanging small parchment scrolls bearing your sweet words, affectionate nicknames or messages, as well as small padlocks. The Bench of Love; Credits: Diane Lombardo “The Balcony”
In the spirit of “balcony scenes” as in Romeo and Juliet or Cyrano de Bergerac, discover this setup that invites declaiming. “The Declaration” and “Appearances/Disappearances” by The Poetic Whistlers Commandos
In a bid to slow down the world, “The Declaration” is a display of 50 love poems on literally planted black and white panels in the garden of the MPT Jules Vallès.
AND
'Appearances/Disappearances', poetic, philosophical and literary secrets in all the world’s languages, whispered into passersby’s ears with hollow canes (the Nightingales) by 5 actors. The Poetic Whistlers Commandos; Credits: Jaïpur Quennefer for ThePoeticWhistlersCommandos
“The Lanterns” by the Association The Dust
Created during workshops with residents, let yourself be carried by the gentle glow of the Lanterns planted in the love-themed décor.
Oscar Niemeyer Square
Disco 2 Chevo and TV Store form a creative duo specializing in immersive musical and visual experiences. Centered around a Citroën 2CV transformed into a DJ booth and original video scenographies blending screens and lights, they offer unique performances for weddings, festivals, and public or private events. Their universe blends retro aesthetics, disco culture, and audiovisual production to turn every occasion into a true show.
For more on Disco 2Chevo :
@disco2chevo@tvstore
Pulp Nord
Music, dance, love... topics that deserve to be shared among enthusiasts. Guided by artist OLEK DO, dive into the world of the fanzine. Drawings, collages, photos... embrace color and walk away with your own creation.
OLEK DO
Art director specializing in editorial and graphic design, he creates bold, distinctive visual identities with a keen eye for color and typography. Olek Do operates in the drag world as an artist.
Funny and flamboyant, Enza and Gigi invite you to sharpen your cultural knowledge. Quizzes, blind tests and lip-sync performances await. Brush up on your classics! The world of nightlife, the music scene and love will no longer hold any secrets for you.
ENZA FRAGOLA and GIGI VONDREDEE
Members of the Maison Chérie drag house based in Villejuif, the two artists regularly perform at private events but also bring their art to a wider public, whether through bingo nights in restaurants or storytime sessions in libraries.
Want to make this Nuit Blanche even longer? Take a look at programs in other Val-de-Marne towns.
Nuit Blanche 2026: all the nocturnal artistic events to see in Val-de-Marne (94)
Nuit Blanche invites us to mark our calendars for this Saturday, June 6, 2026, in Paris and across Île-de-France! In Val-de-Marne, a host of artists are popping up in Gentilly, Nogent-sur-Marne, and Villejuif, with mind-bending installations and wild performances... Discover the program! [Read more]
Dates and Opening Time
On June 6, 2026
Location
Villejuif
villejuif
94800 Villejuif
Prices
Free
Official website
www.villejuif.fr
Nuit Blanche 2026: all the nocturnal artistic events to see in Val-de-Marne (94)
