#these rehearsals are so good at educating the viewer about the choreography

[fonteyn]

FUMI KANEKO and VADIM MUNTAGIROV rehearse the roles of King Leontes and Queen Hermione for The Royal Ballet's production of "The Winter's Tale" (2024).

[ladyonfire28]

Portrait of a Lady on Fire: An Interview With Céline Sciamma

I finally found that old interview that Céline did back in August 2019, that i had read many months ago and that I wanted to share with you all because it’s a pretty great one. So here’s the whole translation of it.

Portrait of a Lady on Fire: An Interview With Céline Sciamma

18th century. Marianne (Noémie Merlant) is a young painter who is commissioned to paint a portrait of Héloïse (Adèle Haenel), fresh out of the convent, in order to "present" her as well as possible to her future husband. The previously hired painter had not succeeded in completing the requested portrait, as the model did not want to submit to the exercise. In her fourth feature film, Céline Sciamma offers a reflection on the artist's gaze. She does not, however, overlook the romance and passion of the artist's gaze. And her characters embody themselves more than ever, with force. Meeting with the director at the Angoulême Film Festival.

From the very first shots, with these brush strokes, you seem to wonder about your own work. The film is called "Portrait" and, very quickly, a character asks Marianne: "Do you think you will manage to paint her?" Is this also your questioning as a director? The difficulty of a good portrait?

Céline Sciamma: Yes, but I don't know if I would call it a difficulty: I would call it research. The film very quickly, from the beginning, puts the question of the gaze. The first line of the painter's character does not so much evoke the question of her own gaze but evokes more the gaze of others. The very first line of the film is: "Take the time to look at me". The film is extremely playful with its means. It asks the question of what it is to look, in two places at once: the dialogue of love, and then the dialogue of creation, which brings into play the question of the gaze and allows us to renew the reflection around this question.

Marianne, the character played by Noémie Merlant, is almost in the voyeur's posture, she begins by observing in secret. Does this question you as a filmmaker?

Yes it raises the question of cinema.

Do we always have to question that?

I think we have to stay within this dynamic of interrogation. Not as something elusive, but as something that renews itself, that provides new ideas, new pleasures. In all my films, there is only one point of view, one main character, even if it's often not the dominant character. It is indeed difficult to create a hierarchy in this film, to affirm that there would be a first and a second role: there is one who is in all the scenes, in all the shots, and the other one is not, but I find that the film, strangely enough, manages to reopen the question of the hierarchy between them.

I always make films where the characters, female characters, are observant. In this one, the movement lies in the fact that the dynamics of infiltration of the gaze have changed. The pitch of the film could be: she looks at her in secret because she doesn't consent to be looked at, then she consents. The dramatic shift means that, very early on, the characters will look at each other. We're not in a voyeuristic dynamic, but in the illusion of a one-way scrutinizing. Heloise's gaze is oriented. In fact, one of Heloise's first glances is a look to camera, it indicates the fact that she sees everyone; she is looked at, and we, spectators, look at her too.

You talk about main and supporting roles and, indeed, in the title, there is mention of a lady. However, isn't the portrait to be taken in the plural?

Absolutely !

An idea that is illustrated in the two last shots, a shot/ reverse shot between two portraits, one freeing the other in a way. How is this shot made? How do you direct it, what do you say to your actresses?

Indeed, this plan raises a lot of questions. It is the last shot/ reverse shot of the film, and here we're back with a character who is watched without knowing it. The difficulty of the shot - which is also its purpose - is that it is a two and a half minute sequence shot, and of great technical complexity. The idea was to get close to a face, to successfully make the focus in an Italian-style theatre, while asking the actress to give a very big performance. You can't do that fifty times!

How many takes did you do ?

Three takes! Based on a fairly precise partition, a choreography basically, of which we had identified a few tipping points with the music. Adèle made the emotional journey.

What did you say to her ?

I told her in advance that there was a journey, made up of five or six steps, and that it was up to her to interpret them as she wished. That shot was never rehearsed. There was something written, quite literary even, there was this material in the script, but then it was reduced to five words, five steps - a path that she had to interpret.

During the first few seconds, you watch Heloise, but then, I think, very quickly, you end up watching Adèle Haenel, the actress, acting. This distance - which reminds us that this is cinema - leaves room for the spectator, and reminds them that they are also in a theatre seat. That they are watching a film.

Weren't you afraid to cross that line?

No, I think it's always important to ask yourself how you say goodbye to the film, with what very intimate feelings you want people to leave the theatre. I think about that all the time. Making room for people to think about their own stories. For me, creating an active viewer is part of the project. And it's true that sequence shots have that ability, because of the time, the tension and the danger they create. The viewer's gaze is what keeps the shot going, but it's also the shot that keeps the viewer going.

The spectator as subject is very important, especially for this film, which is obsessed with this question: how do you film only subjects? To film people, women, as subjects? We are often filmed as objects, we are educated to that, we take pleasure in it. It's a question of re-educating our gaze and creating new pleasures. And, even as a practitioner, I'm not here to lecture people: I place myself at the center of this issue.

Your films are all about identity, the individual at the center of a particular environment, conflictual or not. Is the individual always the core of the stories?

In any case there is always the desire of a character who is often isolated and who seeks to enter a group. And also a love dynamic. But this time, this dynamic is really at the center.

It wasn’t the case in your other films

No, it wasn't love stories that was experienced, it was love that was felt, and we were more in the story telling. But I believe that there is always, in love or friendship, a dynamic of emancipation. When you're with children or teenage characters, there's necessarily the idea of growth, but also, already, this dynamic. The individual is indeed at the center, but as a point of view. I don't make hyperlink films, there is always only one person watching.

As you've made your films, you've shown childhood, pre-adolescence, adolescence, and now it's about young adults. Do you find yourself a little bit in each of these heroines? Do you somehow feel you grew up with them?

Yes, absolutely. And it was the first time I wanted to write a story with adults, women, and a story that would have been really lived. I also wanted to work with professional actresses.

Including one who also grew up a little bit with you?

Yes, of course! That's what I wanted, and not inventing actresses. We're not in first-time stories anymore. Even if it's maybe the first time they love someone… It's another kind of intellectual dialogue, an additional expression.

How did you address the issue of language? Since the story takes place in the 18th century?

I wanted more literary dialogues, but I also wanted it to remain a fairly straightforward language, without any affinities, without seduction. The way it's set up creates a kind of shift, a movement - and it's pretty sexy... Then the actresses' tone, the rhythm they create, the way they use their voices, hold them in place or, on the contrary, cause them to overflow, and it's a score they played very finely.

I also enjoyed imagining verbal jousting, and above all imagining a dialogue in which there would be no intellectual domination - neither class nor language. On the contrary, there would be a horizontality, an equality in the exchange which, for me, beyond the political aspect, could be exciting because it’s not already written. It’s also because it’s a women's story that it’s not already written.

The sincerity of a project raises a question for Marianne in the film, especially in relation to the social conventions she has to integrate into her painting. As this is your fourth film, and as they are always quite intimate projects, do you also ask yourself this question?

It was less the artist's doing than the fact that she was asked the question. She answers with sincerity, but she is also stung to the core. It was more about the dialogue between them and the idea of collaboration. I'm quite collaborative in my way of working, so the idea of an authority being questioned is not necessarily the subject. It was a way of showing this dialogue between the actress and the director, between the painter and the model. It was a lively debate at the time, and it may still be relevant today: does the portrait rather require enhancement, or a resemblance, is it frozen for eternity? Is it a morbid thing that is enough to preserve from death? The portrait was a debate of the Enlightenment, so for me it was a way of being at the heart of the philosophical ideas that animated the time. But it wasn't necessarily an exploration of conscience on the issue.

Does this work of observing actors and actresses - experienced or not - seem inexhaustible to you?

I hope so! For this film, it was about filming someone with whom I have an ongoing, powerful, important dialogue, and whom I know well. At the same time, there was also that desire to meet someone new.

Did you film them the same way?

Yes.

You almost don't recognize Adèle Haenel at the end...

That was really part of the desire of the film: to present a new Adele, to look at her differently, with everything I knew about her, everything we know about her, but also everything that remains to be discovered. It's the only time when there's a form of romanticism: the one that consists in filming faces. It's still very mystical.

What did you want to do with this ghost figure, who appears through Héloïse dressed as a bride?

There are two timelines in the film: this chronicle of a love that is born in the present, and which we look at patiently, and the timeline of memory, the memory of this love. And the contagion of these two timelines is through this ghost. Marianne is - even though we are in the present tense - already haunted by the last image she will see of Heloise.

The film is a flashback, but aren't all love stories already haunted by their end?  Isn't that what makes us live and fear them at the same time?

Is the next portrait already in you? Have you already started working on it?

No, I haven't. I have a project for a children's film, an animated film, so it's necessarily a long-term project. But otherwise, I don't know yet: as long as the films are not released in the world, I have a hard time seeing what happens next.

I'm waiting to see the dialogue that the film will have with the world, the effect it will have. Then there is that moment when you allow yourself to dream, and that daydreaming is always a bit long with me. You have to collect ideas, images that sometimes have nothing to do with each other. At a given moment, there is a synthesis that takes place, and that makes you want to go there.

[caveartfair]

Cai Guo-Qiang Is Giving Philadelphians Free Rides on a Fleet of Fiery Pedicabs

Portrait of Cai Guo-Quiang by Jeff Fusco Photography. Courtesy of the Association of Public Art.

“Go, go, go, go!” shouted Cai Guo-Qiang, with gleeful excitement, on a recent evening in Philadelphia. A fleet of pedicabs, festooned with a dazzling array of glowing lanterns designed by the artist, advanced down the street in a tight pack. The cyclists put their fanciful vehicles through a series of maneuvers, returning single file in a snaking line and then breaking into two threads that weaved in and out from each other.

“It’s really exciting to see them crisscross,” said Cai, watching them rehearse his choreography from the curb near the warehouse in North Philly where his studio team has been customizing the 27 pedicabs with almost 1,000 lanterns. “Your heart jumps.”

On September 14th, the internationally renowned Chinese artist will debut this public art project, titled Fireflies, on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway, the grand boulevard modeled on the Champs-Élysées running for a mile from the Philadelphia Museum of Art to City Hall. The pedicabs will show off their moves, like synchronized swimmers, in an evening performance open to the public near 22nd street.

It will be shot from above and projected via live feed on a large screen positioned at the head of the parkway below the museum. From the following night through October 8th, from 6 to 10 p.m. on Thursdays through Sundays, city dwellers and tourists can ride for free up and down the parkway in these pedicabs under their bobbling canopies of lights.

Photo by Jeff Fusco Photography. Courtesy of the Association of Public Art.

“Fireflies will give new life to our parkway at night and a sense of civic joy and happiness,” said Penny Balkin Bach, executive director and chief curator of the Association for Public Art, which commissioned the project in celebration of the centennial anniversary of the Benjamin Franklin Parkway. “It’s more necessary today, than ever, for us to create social situations for people to come together without judgment. It’s the embodying principle of this work.”

Known for his spectacular and surreal art events that paint the sky with pigmented gunpowder materials, in the form of fireworks and explosives (including Fallen Blossoms, which exploded in 2009 in front of the Philadelphia Museum of Art), Cai is interested in shifting the role of the viewer here from bystander to participant.

“What’s very moving to me on this parkway is the fact that it is lined with so many flags commemorating the importance of the immigrant history in Philadelphia,” said Cai, 59, a Chinese immigrant based in New York. He conceived of Fireflies before the election of Donald Trump brought the issue of immigration in this country to a crisis point, and he hopes that the project creates “an image with everybody, including immigrants, roaming about freely.”

Photo by Jeff Fusco Photography. Courtesy of the Association of Public Art.

As with his explosions, which draw on his love of fireworks as a child in Quanzhou, China, Cai’s lanterns reference the ones of his youth that children carried at night during the traditional Lantern Festival, which takes place annually on the fifteenth day of the Chinese lunisolar calendar. As Cai tells it, the festival’s origin story goes like this: 1,000 years ago, the God looked down in anger at the extravagances of the people of Quanzhou celebrating the new year and vowed to burn the city in punishment. After a warning from the God’s daughter, all the households of Quanzhou lit up red lanterns and fooled the God into believing the city was already on fire.

“The lanterns have a relationship with the city’s destiny,” said Cai, who is interested in how his lanterns could now foster communication and good will in the City of Brotherly Love, at a time of national unrest.

It’s hard not to feel delight at the sight of this brigade of colorful lanterns. Suspended on curved rods sprouting from the tops and sides of the pedicabs are a constellation of animated objects and characters— robots, grasshoppers, tigers, planets, submarines, ladybugs, rockets, high heels, watermelons, helicopters, pandas, ice cream cones.

Cai’s favorite is the wide-eyed extraterrestrial, which he calls an “avatar” of himself. He identifies strongly with the lanterns shaped as stars, airplanes, and roosters (his animal sign in the Chinese zodiac)—reminiscent of the ones he used as a child. The lanterns are composed of fabric with a resin coating, made by artisans in Quanzhou working from Cai’s designs, and are illuminated with battery-charged lights.

The artist likes working in multiples of nine, so he chose to make 27 pedicabs. Auspiciously, after already naming the project, he discovered that fireflies are Pennsylvania’s state insect. He pointed out that the parkway commemorates Benjamin Franklin, whose pastimes have resonance with Cai’s own interests. “He used a kite to see if it was possible for it to hit lightning,” said Cai. “This is like an artist’s work.”

Photo by Jeff Fusco Photography. Courtesy of the Association of Public Art.

This fall, Cai is also opening two major exhibitions. The first, on September 13th at the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts in Moscow, celebrates the 100th anniversary of the Russian Revolution. “For me this is particularly significant because I grew up in communist China with the education of socialist realism,” said Cai, who has made gunpowder paintings that explore the subjects of history, revolution, and utopian dreams. “This is an opportunity for me to think of this anew.” On October 25th, Cai debuts new gunpowder paintings at the Prado Museum in Madrid, made in response to the museum’s Old Masters collection, including the mystical light found in El Greco’s paintings.

While Fireflies may seem a departure from Cai’s signature work using exploded gunpowder as a means of pigmenting canvas and sky, Bach sees them as connected by the element of chance. “As in his fireworks, there’s a point at which he’s not in control and Fireflies will have a life of its own,” she said. Cai views his role as director as only half of the piece. The rest will be completed by the experience of his diverse crew of cyclists out on the parkway.

“I haven’t grown up,” said Cai, beaming as the pedicabs whirled past him. “The lanterns are like the fireworks of my childhood. It’s an explosion that can never be put out.”

—Hilarie M. Sheets

from Artsy News