Pacôme Thiellement

Pacôme Thiellement
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Born	(1975-11-06) 6 November 1975 Neuilly-sur-Seine
Occupation	Writer

Pacôme Thiellement (born 6 November 1975) is a French essayist and filmmaker.

Biography

Born in 1975 to a French father and a Franco-Egyptian mother of Coptic Orthodox church, Pacôme Thiellement created the comic fanzine Réciproquement in 1987, followed by a micro-publishing house called Vitrine, where he published alternative authors like Gilbert Shelton, Édika, or Carali, as well as emerging authors like Jean-Christophe Menu, Mattt Konture, or Stanislas Barthélémy, who later co-founded L'Association. This editorial work brought him attention from critics, and in 1989, the TV show L'Assiette anglaise featured a report on him. In 1991, he won the Alphart Fanzine award.

Inspired by the magazine Le Grand Jeu and the “simplists,” he founded the collective Spectre in 1998 with painter Scott Batty and literature students. They published a prestigious journal, exhibited art, and produced short films before disbanding in 2004.

He later wrote essays, articles, and a novel on pop culture (rock music, comics, TV series) and Gnostic thought, about which he became an uncritical advocate. He frequently wrote about David Lynch, stating: "From Blue Velvet onwards, Lynch constructs his America. He was one of the first to make me want to write. On one hand, there's the idea of innocence, no matter the universe he presents. He never indulges in darkness for its own sake. On the other hand, his cinema is so full of mystery that it turned me into an investigator."

He also delved into experimental cinema in close collaboration with Thomas Bertay, with some of their works being screened at the Palais de Tokyo. Thiellement regularly contributed to specialized magazines (e.g., L'Éprouvette, Rock & Folk, Chronic'art) and appeared on the France Culture radio show Mauvais Genres.

In 2020, he published Tu m’as donné de la crasse et j'en ai fait de l’or, described as "the novel of a pop culture essayist attempting autobiographical storytelling."

Since October 2020, Thiellement has hosted a monthly film club at L'Archipel cinema in Paris called Les Dimanches de Charm El-Cheikh, welcoming guests like Bertrand Mandico, Elina Löwensohn, and others. He explained the concept as: "We'll make a film club unlike any other. Half laboratory, half commedia dell’arte, we’ll be masked, but we’ll turn that constraint into an experimental carnival."

In 2021, he participated in the PARVIS research workshop organized by the Institut Francilien d'Ingénierie des Services (IFIS) and Gustave Eiffel University, focusing on excavating the past and archiving the present.

From 2021 to 2023, he regularly contributed a video column Inferent on the Blast (webTV), discussing YouTube phenomena and their excesses (collective hysteria, narcissistic perversion). Since 2022, he has hosted another column, La Fin du Film, dedicated to cinema and film analysis. In 2023, he launched L'Empire n'a jamais pris fin on Blast, focusing on the lingering influence of the Roman Empire on current institutions, adopting a non-historical perspective.

Publications

His published works include essays on various topics like Paul McCartney, Frank Zappa, and David Lynch, as well as collections of articles and novels. Some notable titles are:

• Poppermost - considérations sur la mort de Paul McCartney (2002)
• Économie Eskimo - le rêve de Zappa (2005)
• Les Mêmes Yeux que Lost (2011)
• Pop Yoga (2013)
• La Victoire des Sans Roi. Révolution gnostique (2017)
• Paris des profondeurs (2022)
• Le Secret de la Société (2024)

Videography

Thiellement has also directed several films and series, including La Conspiration des danseuses (2002), Stupor Mundi (2016), and video series such as Infernet (2021–2023) and La Fin du Film (2022–2024).