Documents d’artistes Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur, in partnership with Réseau documents d’artistes, offers a program of filmed portraits of artists. The Documents d’artistes associations regularly produce films about the contemporary artists featured on their sites. These productions enrich the documentation of artists’ practices and offer a gateway into their creative worlds, revealing the processes involved in researching and producing their work.
Olivier Millagou – A Swingin Summer (16’41)
A film by Vincent Pajot
Documents d’artistes Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur: documentsdartistes.org/millagou
Olivier Millagou is a surfer, visual artist and teacher at the Ecole Supérieure d’Art et de Design in Toulon. His artistic practice is based in part on a solid surfing culture. In 2019, Olivier Millagou is staging an exhibition at Galerie Sultana featuring “surfable works” created with a local shaper. In the film “A Swingin Summer”, Olivier Millagou looks back on his artistic practice and, accompanied by Gibus de Soultrait (surfer, journalist and writer), activates his sculptures in the Atlantic Ocean.
Director: Vincent Pajot – Production: Documents d’artistes Paca, with the support of the French Ministry of Culture as part of its assistance for alternative recording and broadcasting. In partnership with Réseau documents d’artistes. The film was shot in March 2023.
Radmila Dapic Jovandic (16’55)
A film by Isabelle Solas
Documents d’artistes Nouvelle-Aquitaine : dda-nouvelle-aquitaine.org/radmila-dapic-jovandic
In her studio, the place where she “weaves [her] life”, Radmila Dapic Jovandic works paper like an inexhaustible material, with strength and sensuality. From folds to folds, playing with transparencies, textures and the backs and forwards of the forms she draws from it, she has been developing a prolific body of work for several decades. Filmmaker Isabelle Solas shows the scope of her work, following her research, revealing her questions and all the life her creations conceal.
This film is the third in a series of six to be produced in 2022 and 2023. Entrusted to a creative documentary filmmaker, each production is devoted to an artist featured in the Documents d’artistes Nouvelle-Aquitaine documentary collection.
Director: Isabelle Solas – Sound editing and mixing: Maxime Berland – Calibration: François Engrand – Production: Documents d’artistes Nouvelle-Aquitaine – Coproduction: Les Films de l’Écharpe – With the support of the French Ministry of Culture as part of its assistance for alternative recording and broadcasting. In partnership with Réseau documents d’artistes. – Music: La samba des cœurs fragiles, Chocolat Billy – Acknowledgements: Julie Navarro, Françoise Seince, Marie Fouillaud and École nationale d’art et de design de Limoges, Julie Chaffort
The film was shot in April 2023.
Clovis Deschamps-Prince – Tenter (10’07)
A film by Vincent Pajot
Documents d’artistes Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur : documentsdartistes.org/deschamps-prince
Clovis Deschamps-Prince works with and in landscape. Real and/or imagined landscape. He has developed a practice of sculpture, installation and, more recently, performance, using ceramics and fabric as his preferred media. Since 2021, as part of his “Tenter” project, Clovis Deschamps-Prince has been bivouacking in places historically associated with ceramics and pottery. It’s in Mormoiron, in the heart of its ochre and clay landscapes, that we follow the artist. From preparing her backpack to setting up her bivouac, the artist gathers earth, material for future creations.
Director: Vincent Pajot – Production: Documents d’artistes Paca, with the support of the French Ministry of Culture as part of its assistance for alternative recording and broadcasting. In partnership with Réseau documents d’artistes. The film was shot in 2022.
Emmanuelle Rosso (17’)
A film by Margaux Germain
Documents d’artistes Bretagne : ddabretagne.org/emmanuelle-rosso
“How do you live outside your own home?” asks Emmanuelle Rosso, who recently set up her studio on Belle- Île-en-Mer. Her paintings, drawings, photographs, texts, films and performances strike with their delicate relationship to space, and take the form of a single large constellation she calls the Blue Theater Project. “Is the void a space to live in? She continues her investigation. The artist allows herself to be traversed by what she sees, working from the memory of an image or experience and composing with the gaps. It’s as if her senses could absorb her environment and then reveal it on a surface: it’s a gradual revelation, akin to the process of color appearance in dyeing – a technique dear to the artist – or photographic development, rather than the representation of an existing motif.” […] Martina Sabbadini
Image and editing: Margaux Germain – Sound design: Romain Joubert – Production: Documents d’artistes Bretagne, with the support of the French Ministry of Culture as part of its support for alternative recording and broadcasting. In partnership with Réseau documents d’artistes. The film was shot in February 2022 on Belle-Île-en-Mer.
Emmanuel Simon (13’39)
A film by Cécile Dumas
Documents d’artistes Occitanie : ddaoccitanie.org/fr/artistes/emmanuel-simon
Interview with Stefania Meazza, as part of the exhibition Et j’ai vu le bout du pays où les nuages sont infinis. Volet II: Vivre l’expérience, 23.09 to 03.12.2022, BBB Centre d’art, Toulouse. In his practice, Emmanuel Simon challenges the notions that make up the vocabulary of the visual arts – particularly those of work and author. Immersed in the contexts in which he is invited to operate, the artist sets out to thwart the customs of the milieu: he transforms personal exhibitions into collective invitations (to artists as well as to amateurs), privileging the process and allowing his personal practice to dissolve into a collective dynamic. From painting, the medium he has used since his student days, other forms remain that have a more or less obvious filiation with it: wall painting (the result of abandoning the stretcher and support), publishing (capable of retracing the dynamics of collective work), sculpture or installation (in direct contact with the work’s physical context). […] The unpredictable and precarious nature of the creations resulting from these experiments questions the status of the work, while offering a broader, plural and demystified reading of it.
Director: Cécile Dumas – Production: Réseau documents d’artistes & Documents d’artistes Occitanie – Collection d’entretiens filmés du Réseau documents d’artistes, 2022. The film was shot in September 2022 in Toulouse.
Jürgen Nefzger – Épuisement (15,09’)
A film by Vincent Pajot
Documents d’artistes Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur documentsdartistes.org/nefzger
On the Arbois plateau behind Aix-en-Provence, photographer Jürgen Nefzger’s eye was caught by a massive, unauthorized landfill site. During one of his working sessions on the site, the artist talks to us about his new “exhaustion” series, the result of his successive explorations of this devastated natural area. For many years now, Jürgen Nefzger has paid particular attention to the symptoms of the world’s collapse, the weapons used to dismantle life and the forces of resistance. His photographs and films reveal a disturbing trend of environmental transformation. More than testimonies, his works are driven by the precision of the gaze that accompanies their critical engagement.
Director: Vincent Pajot – Production: Documents d’artistes Paca, with the support of the French Ministry of Culture as part of its assistance for alternative recording and broadcasting. In partnership with Réseau documents d’artistes. The film was shot in 2023.
BROCOLI – Portrait du collectif Les ateliers (33’)
A film by Philippe Eydieu
Documents d’artistes Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes lesateliers.eu / dda-auvergnerhonealpes.org
With members of Les ateliers collective: David Blasco, Hervé Bréhier, Marion Chambinaud, Audrey Galais, Sébastien Maloberti, Anne Marie Rognon, Bruno Silva and Marjolaine Turpin. And with the participation of Léa Bouttier and Léa Stella Lalanne, workshop visitors in 2022.
This film is dedicated to the founding artists and permanent residents of the Les ateliers collective space in Clermont-Ferrand. The Les ateliers association is a structure founded, embodied and administered by and for artists from the region and beyond. It supports the visual arts by offering creators the opportunity to pursue their research under professional production and hanging conditions. The collective recently moved to the La Diode site (a cultural wasteland in Clermont-Ferrand). Three specially refurbished hangars made available by Clermont Auvergne Métropole, with the support of the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes Region, are home to some twenty artists.
Direction, image and sound: Philippe Eydieu – Editing: Philippe Eydieu, with Alex Pou, Marie Orts, Marion Robin and Nelly Girardeau Music: Le Chœur régional d’Auvergne, Philippe Eydieu and Plancton Chronicles – Text: Extract from an article by Émilie d’Ornano, La Belle
Revue #12, 2022 – Production: Documents d’artistes Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, with the support of the French Ministry of Culture as part of its support for alternative recordings and broadcasts. The film was shot in 2022 at Les ateliers – La Diode, Clermont-Ferrand.
