Original subtitles

We had to trim this tree back.

It was blocking all the light.

I set out on a series of trips, filming here and there...

faces and words, museums, rivers, and art.

I listened to people I met — sometimes by chance —

AGNÈS VARDA FROM HERE TO THERE

especially artists whose work I like.

When I returned from my first trip,

the tree already had new shoots.

I continued my travels, by train or plane,

filming in every city, not to file a report,

but to capture fragments, moments, people.

The tree was coming back to life.

I came and went...

and Jean-Baptiste and I edited the material I'd gathered.

But long before I completed my journeys and my work,

which lasted well over a year,

the tree, with new shoots and leaves,

had grown back all its foliage in less than three months.

You see the process here in under two minutes.

And viewers will see these chronicles over several days.

So this series shoots and leaves, so to speak.

In this episode we'll go to Brazil, Brussels,

Stockholm, and Venice.

We'll meet the art critic Obrist and the painter Barceló.

Though we travel far away, our shadow remains on the ground.

I'm going to Brazil to play filmmaker.

It's not after-sales service. We accompany our films

and visit other places and people who welcome us.

I am indeed welcomed in Rio,

by Fabiano Canosa, the Brazilian from New York,

and Joel Pizzini, local filmmaker.

Joel's partner is Paloma Rocha,

daughter of filmmaker Glauber Rocha.

Paula Tesser is also here, to accompany me and interpret.

She's a singer.

Rio de Janeiro's famous Sugarloaf.

I think of Mom, who would put sugar on leftover bread for us.

From my room in Ipanema I see the beach.

Here it is at 7:00 a.m...

and at noon.

A bit further down is famous Copacabana Beach.

Here you can drink delicious coconut milk.

My son Mathieu is here.

He's come as Mathieu Demy, actor.

Jeanne Moreau and others are here too.

Look at the big birds.

We're here for the Rio Film Festival.

Fabiano, who once booked films for the New York Public Theater,

has come home.

Here is the villa of Villa-Lobos, a center for music and gatherings.

Now I devote my time

to doing retrospectives and television shows

about Brazilians whom I love and admire,

including Villa-Lobos, our greatest classical composer.

Brazil produced two true geniuses in the 20th century:

Villa-Lobos...

and especially Glauber Rocha, my brother.

An amazing man.

The filmmaker came to fame with a strange political film...

Black God, White Devil.

Not with a rosary, Satan...

but with a rifle in hand!

Lies! Lies!

Didn't you say he was great only in his head?

Virgulino was great, but he made himself small.

Lies!

Paloma handles the restoration and promotion of her father's films.

My kids know about that too.

The filmmaker's house is a film lover's paradise.

Here you might see Glauber's mother, bottom right...

or his sister Ana-Lúcia.

Others come to see his films,

like Antonio das Mortes,

which impressed the jury at the Cannes Film Festival.

Glauber represented Cinema Novo, the Brazilian New Wave,

a mix of social documentary and bizarre imagination.

Jacques and I got to know him as we discovered Brazil and its music.

We went to Ouro Preto in the state of Minas Gerais.

Jacques had a small camera, which he lost.

Famous for his complex shots,

here he took only static shots.

We daydreamed in this rich old gold-rush town.

And I took photographs.

Forty years later, I head to Fortaleza.

Beatriz Furtado has invited me

to meet her students

who are studying my documentaries at the art school she runs.

I greet them by filming them.

Here is lovely Beatriz.

And another teacher. He's so handsome.

This scene in The Gleaners where I grab trucks struck them.

People mention it wherever I go.

Questions, answers.

I watch their films.

Then there's a party for me in an old covered market.

At Fishermen's Beach, the fishermen also wish me good health.

Crayfish, rice, and fish

on another beach known as Future Beach.

My new friends throw me a good-bye dinner.

We exchange gifts.

Beatriz gives me a white shirt.

I give her calissons from Aix

and DVDs to her and Paula,

who gives me her CD.

Those two women are amazing.

We went to the market together to look at fruit.

These are cashews. We extract juice from the fruit

and eat the nut.

These are soursops. The flesh inside is white.

We make everything with them: juice, ice cream.

We hit the hardware store,

where great souvenirs can be found.

I spy statuettes on a shelf.

I'll take this one.

The explanation begins. This is Pomba Gira.

A saint or goddess of protection.

They bring her champagne, cookies, and perfume.

And red roses as a way of asking her...

Asking her to find them jobs, resolve conflicts,

bring back straying husbands.

It's a lot of hope for five euros.

I had to go back through Rio.

Fabiano took me to the Niterói Contemporary Art Museum.

It's like a flying saucer...

that follows the contours of Sugarloaf Mountain.

The architect was Oscar Niemeyer.

Is he still alive?

He's still alive. He's 102.

He was married recently, five or six years ago.

He goes to his office every day...

to tend to business like he's always done.

Business as usual.

I discover Brazilian artists.

Antonio Dias and his diptych For Me, For You.

Luiz Ernesto and a piece from his series Aquarius.

Antonio Manuel.

I'll translate the title of his series:

Repression Once Again...

dated 1968.

This chair by Cildo Meireles reminds me of Magritte's.

And this chair in a cage by Raul Mourão intrigues me.

I think back to some of the chairs in my life.

Ionesco's The Chairs, which I photographed in the 1950s.

Tsilla Chelton and Jacques Mauclair awaited guests who never arrived.

The chair Vilar was pleased to sit in.

Pierre Étaix's chair. "Père Lachaise."

And this chair, one of my first photographs.

These office chairs were stacked by Michel de Broin,

turned inward on a private meeting of the executive board.

An igloo of shady business.

From many to few: Van Gogh's poor chair...

and an armchair.

Two intertwined chairs by Niki de Saint Phalle.

A couple of chairs on a beach.

Ah, how those two words ring out!

Couple. Beach.

Magritte and his chairs.

One very light: Threatening Weather.

One very heavy: La chaise.

All aboard! Mustn't miss the opening of the Magritte Museum...

on the Place Royale in Brussels.

There's a video preview.

Charly Herscovici created the Magritte Foundation.

He holds the rights to the works of the man in the bowler hat.

His collection forms the heart of this museum.

This is Charly.

It's a party.

Violinist Michael Guttman is playing.

The reception is at the Musée des Beaux Arts.

Among the guests is collector Walter Vanhaerents.

Katharina Fritsch's Red Man protects him

in this former factory housing his large collection,

open to visitors.

In the background, a work by Thomas Demand...

and a McDonald's mini-market, reimagined by Tom Sachs.

A hanging piece by Jason Rhoades.

A piece by Markus Schinwald:

a man and a woman separated by a wall.

I had no camera to film it,

but the man's right foot twitches nervously.

The woman doesn't move.

Here, near a long collage by Ugo Rondinone,

is a chair by Urs Fischer.

Its shadow is gigantic...

just like David Altmejd's collection of giants,

a recent acquisition.

Walter is happy, and so is the artist.

It's when I start building them that it all makes sense.

Is it a warrior?

Yes, a warrior whose arm has fallen off.

These are the new occupants of the Vanhaerents residence.

When I was little, I'd go to the Botanical Gardens.

It's now a cultural center and museum.

In 2009, Pierre Alechinsky occupied the main gallery.

It was a major exposition.

Here are just a few paintings.

Whimsical graphics.

We look at them and smile...

and daydream.

At the other end, the painter invited another artist:

Kikie Crêvecoeur.

As others engrave wood or stone then print the images,

she engraves four-inch-square erasers.

Each small square is the imprint

of an eraser I carved.

For this large room

with about 8,000 different eraser impressions,

I used perhaps 100 different erasers.

What's the idea behind it?

When you're on the freeway,

with trees passing by on the side of the road,

they look kind of like barcodes.

I wish barcodes were this beautiful!

For her personal diary, Kikie carves an eraser every day

with a drawing, the date, and a few code words.

She prints these mini-notebook pages, here much enlarged.

From erasers to linoleum.

This is linocut...

a fresco of trees.

First I drew, then carved on linoleum

what nature evokes for me, but only impressions.

I did them separately. It took me a year.

There are sometimes disconnects at the edges,

but sometimes things connect...

which comes from the subconscious.

I can mix them up...

so every time I show them, I configure them differently.

I also made them into postcards.

Sending just one card breaks up the series.

There are endless possibilities.

I'll send Kikie a tourist postcard.

I'm off again.

This city looks like a Middle Eastern pastry...

but it's Stockholm.

They're waiting for me.

Frédéric Strauss, whom I met at Cahiers du Cinéma.

You're my audiovisual attaché here.

Yes, and Marie is your distributor.

Marie Booberg from Folkets Bio.

In the taxi, they speak of Ingmar Bergman.

This is the theater where he directed when he wasn't filming.

And in that building over there,

there was an auction where all his things were sold

just the night before I arrived.

Marie is still shaken up about it...

like everyone in cinema.

I like my room here, with its three windows

overlooking the harbor.

Marie talks about the auction. She brought me the catalog.

The prices are in kronor.

Everything was for sale:

his bed, his bedspread...

his Eames chair...

and several houses on Fårö Island...

including the one he lived in.

And his cars.

Chairs and more chairs. A piano.

That night I thought about the sale and Bergman's children,

some close to him, some not as close.

How did they feel about this decision regarding his estate?

Did any of them have a broker buy back their childhood armoire,

the one with the squeaky door?

Or their chair...

or a little pewter jug?

Hello.

Into my hotel room walks the journalist from Film & TV magazine.

She speaks English and French.

I'm Christina.

I'm a journalist in Stockholm. - Have a seat.

I like to make films too.

I'm curious.

I hesitate to ask...

but have you been ill?

No, I haven't been ill.

- Is it a punk look? - No.

Two or three years earlier...

I'd gone through a few emotional ordeals.

It was a hard time in my life.

Everything was changing. I was getting divorced.

With so many divorces, if women all lost their hair

there'd be a lot of bald women!

I have a lover.

He's very important to me.

When this happened...

I panicked.

The worst part for me

was the feeling of not knowing...

if he'd stay with me.

Christina tells me her lover is a cameraman.

They made a film together

about the importance of hair to the way a face looks.

Look.

Christina looked at herself

and tried to understand how others saw her.

She looked closely

at hair and hairstyles.

Then she discovered people liked her this way.

She strolls along happily by herself...

when she meets another woman...

bald like herself.

Two's company...

and soon there's a crowd.

Thank you, Christina, for letting me use excerpts

from your story and your film.

You're unique...

though that's relative.

She tells me she makes documentaries but must also make a living,

so she's a journalist.

It was my turn to sit on the sofa.

A photograph was taken, and the interview began.

And another photograph for a magazine.

Marie organized the release of my Beaches.

Hostesses handed out goody bags.

I remember the nice meal at the embassy.

Marie and Fred took me back

and shared their story with me.

I was invited because I'd written about Bergman's films.

Then we went our separate ways.

We each had our own life, me in Paris, Marie in Stockholm.

Nearly a year later I wrote her an e-mail

asking if we might see each other in Cannes again.

I'd been thinking of her and wanted to see her again.

Did you change your life before seeing her?

I started thinking about it,

but the change came later.

That's really it.

It's too strong not to act on, right?

Yeah.

Hopefully they're in seventh heaven.

It's back to the sky for me.

A sky by the painter Canaletto,

the Grand Canal in Venice, and Vivaldi.

A classic tour: the Grand Canal and Vivaldi.

I can't resist the desire to revisit the tourist spots.

In 2003, Hans Ulrich Obrist,

along with Molly Nesbit and Rirkrit Tiravanija,

created a project called Utopia Station.

Hans invited me to join other artists.

Each would bring a poster and a work of art.

It would take a whole film to tell you about Hans Ulrich,

globetrotter and contemporary art detector.

I follow him around and listen to him talk about his projects.

He's codirector of the Serpentine Gallery in London.

They have temporary pavilions.

This one is by SANAA.

It's a reflection of the world and its reflections.

It's a source of chaos.

Hans edits, for Agnès b.,

a publication in the form of small posters, Point d'Ironie.

Parreno and Rirkrit see Hans as a ventriloquist's dummy.

And I filmed him silent. How silly of me!

He speaks so well.

I forgot to mention he's Swiss.

Thanks to him, at the Venice Biennial...

I set up three screens for the first time.

I'd long dreamed of doing that.

We had to find the right angle

and place the projectors and speakers.

It took 1,500 pounds of potatoes to cover the ground

up to the screens.

I didn't have the room or a wide-angle lens

to film all three screens,

so I filmed them two at a time.

I was thrilled to find myself among Yoko Ono...

Jonas Mekas...

Laurence Weiner passing by in the background...

and Christian Boltanski, long a favorite of mine.

My potato costume didn't go unnoticed. That was the point.

I'd been to Venice in years past,

a number of times for the film festival.

Once, with Sandrine Bonnaire

for Vagabond,

I brought back a Golden Lion.

And more recently

for The Beaches of Agnès.

The wonderful team who helped me make the film was there,

all dressed to the nines.

Once again I arrive via the lagoon.

When you look closely,

things become very beautiful.

A chic bash for the opening of the former customs house

that François Pinault turned into a contemporary art museum.

We see Charles Ray's Boy With Frog.

A boy with frog... and police protection.

Frédéric Mitterrand, Minister of Culture,

Olivier d'Arvor, from Culture France,

and even André from the club Le Baron.

I make my way through the thicket of guests

and head for the walls.

A wall with art collectors, the Lemaîtres...

and what I did with it.

A wall with my friend Véronique Bérard...

whose portrait I'd shot years earlier.

The French Pavilion is crowded again

for Claude Lévêque...

and his cages for black flags...

or for visitors.

The Arsenal hosts Haegue Yang's cheeky shadows.

The work is entitled Pre- and Post-Copulatory Positions.

A drowned man. No one saves him.

This is Death of a Collector by Elmgreen and Dragset.

We're in the Nordic Pavilion.

And now we're in Japan.

One of Murakami's shattered walls.

Shozo Shimamoto's unstable floor.

In the Spanish Pavilion there are paintings. At last!

Miquel Barceló — what a pleasure!

Paintings inspired by Mali...

with a very elaborate texture.

I painted upside-down.

I put the canvas on the ceiling and painted up there

to create a stalactite effect.

So when you look at it, these spikes jump out at you.

At 20, I painted myself as a young dog.

Now I paint myself as a mature gorilla.

As soon as I painted it, I knew it was me.

This gorilla's not in nature. He's not in the forest.

He's sitting in my studio.

This is my studio.

These are all paint spots from other paintings.

Paint spots on the floor.

This is Miquel's studio in Paris.

I made that cardboard gorilla over there with this.

That albino gorilla.

There's still some cardboard in it.

It was probably the leg of a chair.

Here's another strange scraper.

I make all these things for scraping.

Each scrapes in its own way.

They plow through the fresh paint.

I've used them a lot.

I can squish the prongs together or spread them apart.

You can't find these anywhere. I make them myself.

What for?

- To do this, for example. - Is that a wave?

A wave that bites. You can see its teeth.

It's a wave that became a crocodile skull.

Have you seen real ones?

Yes, Mali has many swamps full of caimans.

He may be the only painter who knows all about caimans and termites.

Right now in Africa, paper and sketchbooks

are being devoured by termites at my place.

They've eaten enormous quantities of paper.

- These came from Africa? - Yes.

- Will you use this? - Yes.

I don't know how yet. But it's beautiful.

No human hand could create anything like this.

It's like the topography of where I live in Africa.

- You go back often? - Every year.

My place would be here, at the edge of the cliff.

This is the Dogon Plateau.

My house is here.

I paint there a lot.

He also paints a lot in Majorca.

I was born here in Felanitx,

near this burned match.

And I live here in Farrutx.

This is where the planes fly in.

I felt a bit trapped there.

When I was 16, I'd have given

my left little toe to have been born in New York.

Not anymore.

I used to paint lots of tomatoes.

I liked how strange they were.

They're like masks.

They have so many holes and crannies.

I like these entry points, these holes.

Like pathways to the center of the earth,

each of these tomatoes.

They're almost like flowers.

This is like a river between them,

with bell peppers or kakis or something.

In summer of 2010,

Barceló shows his work in Avignon.

An elephant standing on its trunk announces the exhibition.

In Avignon, the show is in three places.

We needed a totem.

I wanted to make something with the morphology of a tree,

so it would blend into the town

and its trees.

Across the square, is the Petit Palais Museum.

I like its collection.

Jacob's Ladder by Nicolas Dipre.

I found a recumbent statue, decapitated during the Revolution.

This head fit it perfectly.

It was wonderful. It was its mask.

So I gave the poor soul a new face.

But it's a fish face!

Sure, but it's a face. A nice face.

Barceló is also at the Avignon Foundation

of his gallery owner Yvon Lambert.

I paint portraits of fish

like one would paint family portraits.

I know the morphology of fish. I've fished since I was born.

Clay is a form of paint. I love it. It's like flesh.

It remembers a caress, a punch, or a scratch.

He and choreographer Josef Nadj created a performance piece...

Paso Doble.

Paso Doble is a staging

of my lexicon in clay painting.

Nadj is a dancer. He talked me into doing it myself.

I said, "I'll do it if you'll do it with me."