Marc Gauchee

Marc Gauchée is an intellectual with a singular career path, combining a senior civil service career with cutting-edge academic research. A graduate of Sciences Po Paris and holder of a master's degree in contemporary history, he held strategic responsibilities within the French government, notably at the Ministry of Agriculture and as communications director at the Parc de la Villette. His public engagement also led him to advise major political figures at Paris City Hall and the National Assembly, before joining the presidency of INRAE in 2018.

Alongside his institutional career, Marc Gauchée is a recognized expert in representations of power. In April 2025, he crowned his research with a doctorate in film studies from the Université Bordeaux-Montaigne, under the supervision of Geneviève Sellier. His thesis, devoted to the portrayal of adolescent girls and young women in 1980s French cinema, offers a nuanced analysis of gender norms and social relations on screen. Appointed Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres in 2015, he embodies the essential bridge between public action, culture, and the critical analysis of contemporary images.

Born from a cinephile epiphany in 1989 while watching My Stepmother Is an Alien, this project led by Marc Gauchée explores 120 years of representations of alien women, from Méliès to 2024 productions. Accompanied by director Patrick Foch, he takes advantage of this residency at Rocabella to transform a monumental investigation into the 'male gaze' into a documentary screenplay that is both rigorous and accessible.

The estate becomes a driving character here: Patrick Foch envisions 'artistic punctuations' where space creatures inhabit the Riviera's architecture. Together, and in close collaboration with a prestigious advisory committee (including Éliane Viennot and Raphaëlle Moine), they dissect how science-fiction cinema has constructed, through Selenites and Venusians, a hierarchical and essentialized vision of the sexes.

The challenge is to demonstrate that these extraterrestrial figures, caught between submission and eroticized threats, mirror our own ambivalences toward female emancipation. Between the estate's gardens and the Mediterranean azure, this residency enables the structuring of a filmic narrative where theoretical analysis meets visual creation, making Rocabella the laboratory for a necessary reflection on otherness, desire, and power dynamics.