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 Basel, Köln/Cologne, Saint Petersburg.

We'll meet filmmaker Alexander Sokurov

and two great French artists, Boltanski and Messager.

Everywhere I go, men seem to be trimming trees,

and I enjoy filming that.

Here are some Brazilian trimmers pruning amendoeiras.

This is San Vicente Boulevard in Los Angeles.

They're trimming coral trees.

Here on Noirmoutier Island, it's dark cypress.

In Amsterdam, a surprise.

On a thick tree branch,

a miniature tree trimmer is frozen mid-action.

But I'm on the move.

I'm heading to the Basel Art Fair.

Art is unlimited.

Art is a party.

Art is a fair.

Among hundreds of works

is this stone structure shaped like an igloo.

And another, medieval in feel.

These igloos were created by Mario Merz.

Nests, uninhabitable huts,

shelters made of stone, wood, and branches.

Arte Povera.

Imaginary matrices for nomadic souls...

igloos made of dreams...

or prehistoric life.

I'm sure this piece

is very important for Mario Merz.

I've never seen an igloo I liked as much as this one.

Swiss art dealer Elsbeth Bisig is speaking with us.

We contacted him to do an exposition at our home.

We bought this igloo.

We kept it in our garden,

which belongs to both our private home and the gallery.

We lived with the igloo for 18 years.

Sadly -- very sadly -- we sold it.

But that's the life of an art dealer.

You have to sell things.

I imagine it sold for a high price. Over a million euros?

A bit over, yes.

Was meeting Mario Merz important for you?

How do you say "unforgettable" in French?

Inoubliable.

I thought back to the art dealer's subtle contradictions

from the balcony of my hotel room overlooking the Rhine.

The Rhine... river of legend!

Ah Wagner!

Das Rheingold.

The Rhinemaidens.

The same Rhine runs north and cuts through Köln (Cologne).

I arrive not by boat but by car.

The cathedral, visible from afar, appears in many guises.

All together.

Even pasta.

Delicious with a bit of grated North Rhine-Westphalia cheese.

- Want some water? - Yes, but from the tap.

- Why? - It's "eau de Cologne"!

Unscented "eau de Cologne" gushes in a park...

while the sweet-smelling kind

trickles from a closed-circuit fountain in town.

Our grandmothers and mothers loved the smell and the bottles.

Some folks still do, myself included.

Listen... the perfumer's clock chimes "La Marseillaise."

A bit further along...

another company claims to have invented the famous water...

whose name is always in French.

French was spoken throughout Europe at the time.

And Farina had a specific reason for choosing the name.

He was a new German citizen of Italian origin

and wanted to honor his new hometown, Cologne,

so he named his perfume after it:

"eau de Cologne."

The last Farina by marriage talks to us about smells.

The smell of potatoes.

First, the smell of potatoes growing in the ground.

Why is she talking about potatoes?

The smell of cooked potatoes, of cold potatoes.

Coincidence? Or does she know

that in a nearby orangery, I'm showing images

of wrinkled, shrunken old potatoes with new sprouts?

We also set up the triptych Patatutopia.

We waited for nightfall

to welcome the public.

In this lonely, icy park...

I'm meeting a man to smash his face.

We break the "ice."

Now we put it back together.

He played along.

I try shooting over his shoulder...

then from the side.

Upside-down works best.

He's very patient.

I acquire his shattered portrait.

We hear The Cat's Fugue by Scarlatti...

and we see my cats.

And we do it again with a plaster cast of The Unknown Woman of the Seine.

Here is a trio from the series Shattered Portraits.

At the Ludwig Museum, the great classics:

Fernand Leger, whose style I adore...

and a stabile by the wonderful Calder.

Herr Koenig takes Wilfried, my friend from Cologne, and me

on a tour of surprises.

Isa Genzken imagines children filming.

A real caricature of a film shoot!

The director, intently focused.

The script supervisor, attentively taking notes.

Makeup.

Sets and costumes.

Places... action!

Cut!

I discover the work of Turkish videographer Kutlug Ataman.

Two series of interviews are running.

In the first, called Paradise...

a group of people in California pursue their collective happiness

in their own little bubble.

A silent cacophony on alluring screens.

You have to put on headphones. There's one set per screen.

Downstairs, Ataman's other installation, Küba,

was shot in a poor suburb of Istanbul.

A diverse assortment of people on the fringes.

A cacophony of personal stories. You have to get close.

Soundings is an interactive piece by Rauschenberg

that gets Julia hopping.

A piece by George Segal attracts my attention.

Two solitary figures.

Another piece by Segal was important in my life:

Alice Listening to Her Poetry and Music.

I didn't know how to film my distress when Jacques died,

so I wrapped myself in white, like plaster...

and imitated Alice.

I listened to music the two of us had loved.

Artists invent ways for us to express our emotions.

At the Alliance Francaise,

my film Beaches is shown, followed by discussion,

and I exhibit several photographs.

Filmmakers from the '60s.

Demy...

Visconti...

Fellini.

And Anouk "Lola" Aimee.

My self-portrait is projected on the window.

You can see it outside at night.

I took it at the Accademia Museum in Venice,

before a painting by Jacopo Bellini.

At bottom right...

somber members of La Scuola.

I decided to stand among them and strike the pose.

I relax in the plane.

I arrive in Saint Petersburg.

I knew the city as Leningrad...

and in the taxi it's as if they want me to remember that era.

And in my room...

the moment I turn on the TV, Soviet history unfolds.

I've been given flowers,

a bag with the bridge over the Neva,

and some wintry postcards.

But it's so hot! It's a heat wave!

First interview, near the coatracks at the Maison du Cinema.

The questions are long, but I enjoy listening to Russian.

They translate what I often say about making documentaries.

Quick, stamps for my postcards!

I meet with Mikhail Trofimenkov...

friend and film critic.

The newspaper sent a photographer.

He has a dreamy-eyed look. I take his picture.

The other journalists all want to pose with me.

The youngest, as well as the tallest, Kirill Artemenko,

writes for the biggest paper, Izvestia.

He asked great questions.

My translator, Mikhail Kurtov -- Misha for short --

is writing his thesis on film.

Like many students,

he likes the films of Bresson, Tarkovsky,

Weerasethakul, Godard.

And mine too, he says. He saw them for free on a website.

He introduces me to porters at the station.

They all have college degrees.

Popov, my driver, is a history professor,

knows everything about the city and the czars.

As I said, I enjoy listening to Russian.

We learn there were six Ivans...

including Ivan the Terrible, no doubt.

As I look around, I realize I know nothing of the new Russia.

It has changed radically.

Like everywhere I go,

when I look at buildings and apartment windows,

I realize there are thousands of people I know nothing about,

each with his or her own life.

As in the past, there are poor suburbs

where people, mostly women,

sell odds and ends on the sidewalk.

This means "antique shop"...

and this means "restaurant."

I remember being here with Jacques,

looking for a "pectopah."

No surprise: blini...

and Macedonian salad.

The Teplo restaurant has nice menus with two kinds of reading.

We understand nothing of the food...

but the photos of family and friends require no translation.

The same goes for people relaxing on a park bench.

Not far in the distance,

just across the Neva, is the famous Hermitage Museum.

Natalia Brodskaia is head curator.

She welcomes us and serves as our guide.

I began my life in French art

with the work of Felix Vallotton.

A hall with superb works by Matisse...

purchased when the painter was young.

Wool slippers are required for women in high heels.

Thousands of visitors circulate in guided clusters.

No one stops at this masterpiece. How can that be?

That's how the groups work.

The guide decides what they see.

She'll say, for example...

"Let's go see the Leonardo da Vinci."

And the group walks and walks,

not looking at anything that they pass by.

Saint Luke Drawing the Virgin by Van der Weyden.

There are several other versions.

Experts who have studied

all the paintings featuring the same composition

say this one is the first.

You must be proud.

I'm very proud.

There's too much to see. We do like the guides do.

I choose several paintings and off we go.

Titian's Danaë.

Danaë's father had locked her up, but Zeus wanted her.

So he turned himself into a shower of gold

and impregnated Danaë without her knowing,

and she gave birth to Perseus.

Several hundred people later, we come to Rembrandt's Danaë.

Here, the intrusion of light symbolizes Zeus's rape.

In 1985, someone came to the Hermitage.

He asked the guide...

"Which is the best painting in this hall?"

She said, "Our Danaë, of course."

He then proceeded to spray the painting

with a mixture of acids.

It was horrific.

The painting suffered terribly.

It took 15 years to restore it.

Only specialists can see

the slight difference since the restoration...

where the veil covers Danaë's ankle.

This painting and I have a secret.

The same painting played a role in a film.

Really?

Now it's over.

It's over, gentlemen.

Good-bye.

Where are you going, madame?

The film is Sokurov's Russian Ark, shot entirely in the Hermitage.

She was offended. She left.

It's sacrilege to show just a clip,

for the whole film is one continuous shot,

filmed in one day, December 23, 2001 .

Regards.

I got a chance to compliment Sokurov in Paris,

in the midst of a great racket.

It was so difficult.

For that reason, it's hard to speak of compliments.

You can't make something like that by accident.

I'm not suggesting it was an accident.

It had all the precision of a space voyage.

"Da, da," replies the Russian artist.

Meaning "Yes, yes."

This gallery is devoted to Canova.

This is where the Marquis de Custine walked.

I follow in his footsteps.

Canova!

What a sublime approach to art!

What feeling for the material!

How wonderful!

He is the true heir to the masters of antiquity!

During the film...

the whole history of Russia is told.

Outside there's salsa dancing by the Neva.

We'd been told about a place in an old textile factory.

But truly wonderful surprises awaited on the top floor.

Edward de Lumley of the Alliance Francaise greets us.

An exhaust fan is kicking up a racket.

He says his grandfather was born in Saint Petersburg.

Living here means a lot to him personally.

He shows us a mural,

sculptures by Piotr Bely,

and others by the group "P Professors."

I notice an enchanting spontaneous installation.

Visitors are invited to look at the facing building.

And they do, for a moment.

This place, the Etagi Loft Project,

in operation for 2 1/2 years now,

is today attracting

young people and others seeking

an alternative to the large museums,

seeking contemporary art.

Twenty videos from the Paris Museum of Modern Art are exhibited.

Yes, it's Ange Leccia...

and his silent, magnificent vision of the sea.

Douglas Gordon and Parreno with their film Zidane.

Zidane the soccer player.

Sixty is a good age...

This is Marathon Man, by Julien Discrit.

He tells the story of a man in a single run.

The important thing is to keep a childlike vision.

He's the runner.

At least in certain ways.

Mother, Father and I...

the story of Zineb Sedira's parents.

Zineb listens.

She hears History with a capital H.

Round Eyes by Ariane Michel...

featuring an owl who frequents the Place de la Concorde.

This is a self-morphing video portrait.

It takes a while to get from Boltanski, Christian,

to little Christian Boltanski.

It's Kantor's notion that we all carry

a dead child inside us, ourself as a child.

The first to die is our child self, and we keep it within.

We all have a child corpse that comes back from time to time.

So he says.

Over this sunny lunch with Annette Messager

in my courtyard,

my mind wanders to the children in the museum in Malakoff.

The gentle breeze makes them disappear and reappear.

Children in memories...

almost lost.

Go ahead.

Laure Adler has come to record her radio show.

Good evening, listeners. Welcome to Off-screen.

We're once again at Agnes's house.

We're here with your guest, Christian Boltanski,

who's just arrived from Milan.

Why did you invite him today?

First, I love him. And second --

He's not blushing!

He's used to it.

He's greatly loved as an artist.

I wanted to mention his extraordinary exhibition

entitled Personnes -- with multiple meanings.

"Personne" singular, "personnes" plural...

One means "no one," the other means "everyone."

The Grand Palais is so luminous.

Who'd have thought Boltanski's world would fit in here?

And yet...

I've worked a lot with biscuit tins.

They're everyday objects, but they remind me of funeral urns.

Or a poor man's safe.

Why are they rusty?

That's an artistic effect.

Rusty tins are more beautiful.

They change colors. Each one is different.

I've always used rusty metal tins.

In the beginning I'd pee on them.

Then I started using Coca-Cola, which rusts very well.

But here there are so many that I used acids...

in a warehouse.

I think there are about 3,500 tins on this wall.

They bear only numbers.

It's terrible to kill someone, but it's even worse...

to strip them of their identity.

The numbers evoke a sense that there's someone there,

and they're all different. Each tin is different.

It's as though each tin has someone inside...

or someone's heart...

or someone's spirit.

To me this wall is like a buffer zone

between the street and the mountain.

There are 69 rectangles here.

Rectangles of clothing lying on the floor.

The posts surrounding the clothes

have little loudspeakers

emitting the sound of hearts beating.

Different people's hearts.

Each post emits a different sound.

The loud sounds

are also like a muffled machine.

All these hearts beating sound like a locomotive in motion

or a machine whirring loudly.

And these rectangles,

all different, all varying in composition...

form rows like in a cemetery.

But to me they're also like a refugee camp --

perfectly laid out

but disordered and frightening on the inside.

These rectangles here are comprised

of coats lying on the floor.

You can see each coat's individuality,

which to me is like each person's individuality.

So the first part of the exposition is really about individuals.

Then, on the mountain, this place of death,

we can no longer distinguish individuals.

It's one great mass. They've all lost their identity.

Perhaps not a mountain, but the biggest pile possible.

There have been lots of images --

When there are massacres, bodies are piled on bodies.

It's the tangle of bodies that interests me.

It's a study of mass graves.

It's also about catastrophes.

It's about the earthquake in Haiti too.

The idea of this claw,

usually used for cars or very heavy things,

and which here picks up very light things,

came from carnivals,

those games with pincers that scoop up teddy bears.

I never could grab a teddy bear...

while here the claw grabs the clothes.

So there's the constant movement...

of the claw grabbing and discarding.

But it grabs at random.

For me it's like the hand of God, neither good nor evil,

just doing its job, grabbing and discarding.

Fate is blind. It grabs anything, at random.

It takes anyone, at random.

For me, that's the theme of this piece.

As you age, you wonder why one person lives and another dies.

Why am I still alive?

There appears to be no particular reason.

It's pure chance.

The freezing cold weather we had at the start,

that bitterly cold January,

was an integral part of the exposition for me.

I absolutely wanted the exposition to take place

in the heart of winter.

What I'm trying to do is put people inside the work,

not outside looking in.

It should engage all the senses -- the sound, the cold.

We should be chilled to the bone, lost.

I think talking about all these things...

and trying to understand these mysteries...

makes me happier and more serene.

Have a bit more.

My art doesn't seem very joyful.

Maybe because I explore death and all that.

But I'm actually a very joyful person.

I really love life. - More than I do.

You hate life!

That's not true.

It's certainly fun watching you two together.

There are only a few artist couples out there,

famous or not.

I filmed Elsa and Aragon, for example.

You're both artists, making different types of art.

I lived with a filmmaker. We each did different things.

What's your life like? Is it difficult?

Living with someone is always difficult.

Yes, but is living with an artist

like Christian difficult?

That's a big topic!

Certain things are easier.

He understands if I'm depressed about something.

But it's more complicated on other levels.

I don't think I could live with someone

from outside the art world.

I don't think I could live with a doctor or lawyer.

I'd find that really hard.

I agree. I can't see myself with a banker or an insurance agent.

Though he might have reassured me!

When Annette shows her work abroad,

I never attend the opening, and she never attends mine.

You must have gone to Venice when she was in the Biennial!

He didn't go?

Then you went later. - Yes, I did.

We live our lives as separately as possible.

Annette never sets foot in my studio. - Almost never.

She doesn't know what I'm working on. I never go in her studio.

This is Base 2, my studio.

He never comes here, and I never go in his studio.

They're totally separate.

It's not a family thing. It's an individual thing.

You're alone when you do your work.

You have to be alone.

Tar paper...

stuffed animals...

colored pencils...

black aluminum foil.

You play with different media.

There's fabric, rubber,

rope, lots of nets.

What's on the wall? The mood of the day?

It says "jealousy"...

and written underneath it says "love"

in stuffed animals.

Always love and jealousy -- is that it?

I think so, no?

I don't know.

Of course I played off my identity as a woman.

That's why I made those albums

when I was between 25 and 30.

You want to be unique

and have a signature with lots of personality.

I did 200 different signatures.

This is "A. Messager."

This one's funny because the "A" becomes --

The "A" with the "M"...

At first I called myself "Annette Messager, Collector"

for my collections of my signatures

and for The Men I Love, The Men I Don't Love.

The Men I Love

I love his eyes, I love his cigar

I don't love his cigar I don't love his nostrils

The Men I Don't Love

I only used men I didn't know.

Men from newspapers and magazines

who might inspire fantasies

the way women in magazines do.

They're like open books. I wanted them to be

like little butterfly men,

flitting about, half open.

Alexia Fabre of the MAC VAL Museum.

This one's very handsome.

She loves his relaxed, elegant style.

She doesn't love his shirt collar.

And she doesn't love his boastful air.

"I love his stray lock and glistening hair.

I don't love his toupee. I don't love his part."

We love someone for a reason,

and for that same reason, he begins to annoy us.

We say we love his mustache, then suddenly we can't stand it.

So here...

"I love his tough, clean look."

Then suddenly, "I don't love his tough, clean look."

In My Vows...

you have body parts.

Body parts overlapping and interlocking.

There are parts of hands, breasts, genitals.

Were you having fun or what?

The photos are mainly...

of people I know.

Fragments, close-ups,

but all very black and white.

They're all jumbled up. You can't identify anyone.

It's humanity.

Then at some point I'd had enough of this series

of suspended objects, with ropes and all.

I wanted something more aggressive, more dynamic.

I picked up a broom one day.

"This is it. It's a pole.

I'll stick something on it." The opposite of suspending things.

Like spears from the French Revolution

that I've stuck things on.

It's like they're waiting to go out on a protest march.

We have a lot of those in France.

Kill the bill!

General strike until our demands our met!

Enough of this society

of unemployment and job insecurity!

We worked to earn it, we'll fight to keep it!

Our pension belongs to us!

You often use household items:

comforters, pillows...

cuddly toys.

A bolster is soft.

It's for sleeping.

It's on the bed, so there's a sexual connotation too.

I like to fiddle with them

and have photos peeking out from underneath.

All these familiar objects

are what I actually find unsettling.

The fantastical is all around us.

A practical object can become magical.

I listened to a phone message.

"Would you design the new pass for the Pompidou Center?"

I thought, "Piss off!"

Then, "Wait, that's it!"

"Pass Card, Piss Card."

Surprisingly, they agreed to it.

It was great.

Children's cuddly toys spell out the bad rumors Annette has incited.

RUMOR

My work has always been like this.

And I get insults.

"Dirty whore." "Filthy artist."

Why?

My line, "I think therefore I suck."

Horrible comments! On blogs too.

- "I think therefore I suck"? - Yes, I embroidered that.

And that makes you a slut?

Despite your bad reputation, your name is written in gold.

You have a gilt-edged catalog at the Pompidou.

You're shut inside a museum.

Then suddenly you did that funny thing, The Slammer...

a little guy who knocks all around in every direction.

He wants to get outside

to see the fountain by Jean Tinguely and Niki de Saint Phalle.

I was really taken with that.

Beaubourg is in the heart of Paris,

with people bustling all around.

What's inside wants to get out too. It was to show that.