This week, our selection consists of three films that look at the artistic process and its concurring work rhythms. In every film, we witness the birth of an artwork, in three different fields: cinema, painting and music.
In Où gît votre sourire enfoui? Pedro Costa portrays Danièle Huillet and Jean-Marie Straub during a workshop held at Le Fresnoy in Tourcoing (France) and during the editing process of their film Sicilia!, capturing them in a constant back and forth between theory and craft. In the rhythm of their dialogue, the hesitations and thoughts on their editing is mirrored. Here, a lesson on the filmmaking process and an ode to two filmmakers are umbilically linked.
In El sol del membrillo [The Quince Tree Sun] by Victor Erice, yet another creative work process is revealed.The point of focus of the painter in Erice’s film is the ripening of the fruit of a quince tree and, in a broader sense, the sunlight touching it and thus the passing of time. The painter’s struggles clearly reveal the similarities between the disciplines of painting and filming. A subject as compact as a small quince tree is at the basis of a subtle and exciting trajectory, bringing painter and filmmaker together – and perhaps even in competition with each other.
Capturing the aftermath of May ’68, One Plus One derives from when Jean-Luc Godard set off for London to make a film about power, revolution and art. We witness the different stages in the recording of the Rolling Stones’ song “Sympathy for the Devil”. The transformation that occurs in the shifting of rhythms changes the track from a florid, slow folk ballad into the now well-known apocalyptic rock samba. Several long, uninterrupted shots, in which we see the band polishing the song, give insight into the inner dynamics of the original Rolling Stones. Next to Godard’s edit, which did not show the final track, another version of the film – titled Sympathy for the Devil – was presented by the producer, resulting in Godard punching him after this revised version was revealed at the London Film Festival in 1968.
Où gît votre sourire enfoui? (Pedro Costa, 2001) is available on Projectr.tv.
El sol del membrillo [The Quince Tree Sun] (Victor Erice, 1992) is available on Tenk.
One Plus One (Jean-Luc Godard, 1968) is available on La Cinetek.
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