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.

We'll be visiting many artists in France

at the Lyon Biennial,

and with Pierre Soulages in Sète.

Rivers bring to cities

their movement, vitality, and energy.

Thus, Lyon has brought artists from all over

to its 2009 Biennial.

It's held in a former sugar mill, now renovated.

10TH LYON BIENNIAL THE SPECTACLE OF THE EVERYDAY

Hou Hanru is the curator.

It's called "The Spectacle of the Everyday."

The idea...

is to show that...

perhaps now is the time to look at things we've previously ignored.

To reorient the spotlight

toward something we experience but don't talk about,

that we have no words or images for.

It's a big collective show, and I'm invited.

I love to watch the preparations

and see how installations are installed.

For my shacks, corrugated metal siding is assembled...

panels of images are hung...

a temporary beach is brought in...

and a plasma screen is installed.

Further along, strips of film are hung

to create the walls of my film shack.

My closest neighbors are Chinese, like Yang Jiechang,

who brought pieces of bone in enameled ceramic.

3,300 pieces, I'm told.

And placemats in tissue paper.

He numbers and signs each piece and presents them tidily.

Sarah Sze installed fragile elements.

Hers is a quivering world, full of surprises.

An untitled sphere with a name: Portable Planetarium.

At the Cartier Foundation

she'd exhibited a giant mobile made of found objects.

Takahiro Iwasaki kneels by his work.

As the word "Hiroshima" rings in my head like a horrible gong,

I contemplate the work of this delicate young man

who, with thread pulled from the stacked material,

makes the Lilliputian towers he proudly presents.

Pedro Reyes displays shovels... in spades!

It's a thin line between an art exhibit

and a store display.

Michael Lin brought an entire store from China.

This is from a neighborhood hardware store in Shanghai.

We bought the whole thing.

It all made the trip to Lyon.

But Michael highlights each object

by displaying each as if in an interior design store.

This is indeed the spectacle of the everyday,

and the society of spectacle.

There's even a video of jugglers to entertain shoppers.

There are lots of artists from the Orient here!

You could say that.

It depends how you look at it, from what angle.

If you're in Tokyo, America is the Orient.

If you're in Paris,

then yes, the Orient is Japan, China, etc.

- We're in Lyon. - Yes, so you're right.

We have quite a few artists

who've come from east of Lyon...

including Strasbourg, Germany, etc.

It is indeed all a bit mixed up,

but it accurately reflects

the concept of the world today:

a mixed-up world.

Soccer - that's concrete!

The Yangjiang Group even made it their reason for being here.

They gathered around a table to eat, drink...

and bet large sums of money

on soccer games throughout the world.

The girls announce bets.

They still found time to come see my film shacks.

What must they think of Catherine Deneuve and Michel Piccoli?

Their interpreter murmurs "New Wave."

I'm glad they visited the inhabitants of Noirmoutier.

Here, Chinese men from the Guangdong region...

west of Canton...

gaze at the women of Noirmoutier Island.

It's Mr. Button!

Michel Jeannès.

My acquaintance from Lyon! I have something for you.

Look what I brought you from England.

Chocolate buttons.

Everyone calls me Mr. Button.

I'm developing a practice of simple poetry involving this object.

An artistic project I call "a zone of poetic intention"

based on the button, the smallest common cultural object.

When I find a button on the ground...

I pick it up

and note the time and place and what happened that day.

These are buttons I found out in the world,

and this is one of the notes I wrote.

That same day? What did you write?

"A black button on the #99 bus going over Lafayette Bridge,

and two identical white buttons on Guillotière Bridge."

I found this one in Brest

on May 14, 2008.

You don't sew these on.

You hammer them in.

They're called "bachelor buttons."

This is a year in the diary of a fibulanomist.

Did you say "fibulanomist"?

That's the word for "button collector."

I distribute these cards. People take them.

They add a button and a story.

In ten years I've collected some 800 cards.

Here a woman writes, "Here is the story of my button.

It bears an anchor, a souvenir from the Marines,

reminding me of my lost loves, alas so long ago now.

I was 20.

I remember a Marine I liked, on the Joan of Arc,

a training ship in Mers-el-Kébir, Algeria.

That's my whole story."

And they're fine with you revealing their stories?

Yes, they're fine with it.

I think they're happy.

The idea of buttons at the heart of my work

goes along with the collective aspect.

It's participatory. People bring a lot to it.

Mostly women?

Yes, mostly women.

We're going to La Duchère,

where he's been establishing connections.

I wrote to the locals. "Hello, I'm a poet.

I work with objects. Objects have memories.

Especially buttons."

I used to play with my mother's box of buttons.

I sensed they had stories to tell connected with our mothers...

a matrimony of sorts.

We're at the home of Chantal Roberjot.

She lodges a black cat and three elderly people.

Chantal participated in Women's Heritage Days in 2003.

I remember you brought your box of buttons.

I want to show you this button.

It belonged to a dress I got for my First Communion

that I stupidly tore while riding my bike.

I was so sad.

Michel gave me the idea of letting my buttons speak.

I had never put into words the emotions I felt

rummaging through my buttons.

This is Aïcha Benayad, a neighbor.

I always resisted talking about my buttons.

I'll show you the red ones.

By color is nice!

I bought these red buttons when my daughter was little.

Time has passed so quickly.

It's true that buttons are tiny little things,

but my God, they're so loaded with memories...

with culture, so many things!

Do we need to organize this year?

This cat's a little rascal.

He has two buttons that talk too.

His eyes are two talking buttons.

This work is called Women's Secrets.

It's a work in progress. I asked 100 women.

About 75 replied.

They write down a secret and sew it

into these little canvases with buttons.

The density and colors vary. Some are mother-of-pearl.

We say, "My lips are sealed." Here the secret is sealed.

Unspoken words are also contained here.

Pain and things like that.

For exhibitions, the thread side is shown.

Have you read the secrets?

No, I'm the keeper of the secrets entrusted to poetry.

They're not meant to be read.

Back to the Biennial...

with its wall facing the Rhône and the press car.

The expo features a graffiti artist whose work is never done.

For good reason.

The Yangjiang gang's performance lasted three days.

Then they returned to Southern China,

leaving behind a video of themselves, soccer predictions,

and 120 empty bottles of Chinese beer.

Here are a few, souvenirs of their stay.

Their artwork is the remainders from their happening.

The place is hopping...

but few find their way to my hidden video.

A beached whale angry at the state of the world.

We block out violence as much as possible.

We flee from it. It's only natural.

I flee to Sète.

I had filmed the people there on the beach one winter.

I always enjoy arriving on the train along the water.

I have so many memories here and there.

Civette Bridge in the center of town...

the Palais Consulaire of my teen years...

the harbor, where you can see the sea...

and on the other side of town,

Thau Pond and La Pointe Courte,

where I shot my first film.

I have memories here, and even a lane bearing my name.

I still know some fishermen, who've grown old along with me.

Still the same nets, boathouses, and garages.

I notice some stills from my film.

These pictures were at the community center.

They'd put them on the scrap pile.

I said, "My whole family's here. I'm taking them!"

Some nerve! Show me your family.

How can you ask me who my family members are?

My grandfather, my grandmother,

my uncle, my brother, and me.

Honestly!

She asks as if she didn't know my family!

I don't always know every name.

- That's Louis. - My sweetheart.

My brother. That's Joseph.

And Raphaël in the film?

I'm Raphaël!

- In the film? - Yes.

And your real name?

- Agnès! - I'm losing my mind.

Your first name? - Marcel.

And you played Raphaël?

- And your brother? - He didn't do anything.

- His name? - He wasn't called anything.

Agnès, you're losing it.

Yes, I'm losing it.

But I'm older than you!

Sure, but still!

Much older.

In the film I was 23.

And I was 26. Makes sense.

Really?

Our stories match.

Okay.

My heavens! We worked with Philippe Noiret and Sylvia Monfort.

It was all new to me.

Agnès came around to the house

before the film

and asked us questions.

And she put everything we said into the film.

She retraced...

the story of my —

That's my maternal grandmother.

My grandfather didn't want to give his daughter to my father.

- I'll teach you! - I did nothing wrong!

You're too young to see boys.

Mom got married at 19.

- I played the role — - Of the young suitor?

Of my father. I played the role of my father.

You brought in this girl.

Miss Banegas. She worked at the market.

She played my mother.

Oh, right.

Is it coming back?

It's coming back.

I only have this film to remember.

You have so many to mix up!

You can't remember your first!

Yet it's easy to remember the jousts.

The ritual hasn't changed.

These were filmed in 1954...

and these, in summer of 2010.

The latter take place at night, with no rowers.

These are junior jousts, with motorboats.

Some of the kids are very young.

But it's the same waiting for a jouster to fall.

And the same fun.

This boy is declared winner,

like the character of Raphaël in the film.

When they make me champion, when I'm declared the winner,

my future father-in-law is so happy I won all the jousts

that he gives me his daughter.

Here's Raphaël.

How are you, my boy? - Fine.

Nice tournament. Going to the dance tonight?

What about it, Anna?

Thank you. See you then.

Now you talk to him and let him dance with Anna.

You're a good man.

He jousted well.

He'll be a real man.

Here's a man itching for a fight.

Who's his enemy?

Himself.

This is a video by Cuban artist Alexandre Arrechea.

We're at a temporary exhibition of Caribbean art.

Further along, an icon of power by Hew Locke...

with a cat.

"Yum-yum!" says Thomas Vuille's cat,

immortalized in Marker's film, The Case of the Grinning Cat.

MIAM is the name of this museum,

the International Museum of Modest Art.

It's one of a kind.

Hervé di Rosa with his paintings.

He's a member of the Free Figuration movement.

They borrow from comics, rock music, and graffiti.

We're here to talk to him about MIAM,

which he founded with Bernard Belluc.

Each contributed his collection.

Between the two of us,

we have a good cross-section of modest, popular art.

We thought, "Someday we'll open a museum."

Here we have quite a complete collection of items,

many of them manufactured,

some of them hand-crafted,

that were originally made for purely commercial purposes.

Objects given away as prizes —

like the famous prizes in Bonux detergent.

A soda bottle...

a yogurt with the expiration date on the lid, etc.

When the ad campaign is over,

when the product has been consumed,

when the prize bores the kids and gets sold or thrown out,

it takes on a poetic quality.

Even some brands that produced thousands of prizes

never kept any archives.

Thanks to a few weirdos like us,

this stuff is being archived.

In 50 years' time,

these things won't exist anymore because nobody cared.

These once-useful objects

lost their usefulness and were tossed aside.

They're orphans of invention.

All this stuff forms a family

that no one ever really looked after.

I call this family "modest art." These images and objects.

Another temporary exhibition at MIAM

explores the colorful world of wrestling.

It has a catchy title: Kitsch Catch.

There we discover a world of masks.

Images of fervor and furor.

A stroll by the harbor.

Then, my usual hotel being full, I seek another one.

More kitsch.

I can choose between an all-white room —

Now that's a feather bed!

Or an all-black room.

Black is a must, because the next day I'm visiting Pierre Soulages,

the painter who works with black the way others work the soil.

He lives on a hill, surrounded by trees,

just past the harbor,

between the museum and the Maison Vilar.

When I saw this horizon, my heart leapt.

My friends said, "Did you find your old house?"

I said, "No, but I bought an empty horizon."

He and his wife knocked down a shabby old place

and drew up plans for their house.

I spotted a place down below

and decided to put my studio there.

I don't like imposing studios, the kind that have...

views in every direction.

I'd be too tempted by the view.

My studio is closed off from the sea,

a place where I can focus completely

on what I'm doing.

When I set out this rock, I want privacy.

It means I'm painting, I'm working.

I insist on being alone. Everyone out.

- Even Colette? - Yes.

His wife, Colette, from Sète. A woman of immense discretion.

When I first met Colette,

we went to the Fabre Museum.

We've been together ever since.

It's been 68 years now.

The Pompidou Center, the Museum of Modern Art.

Over 500,000 people have come out of curiosity

or with varying degrees of pleasure or emotion

to see some 90 paintings by Soulages.

The number of paintings is the artist's age.

"I like black's authority,

its gravity, its self-evidence, its radicalism."

"Black has unsuspected possibilities,

and conscious of what I do not know, I go to meet them."

Apparently it's necessary at exhibitions like this

to write on the walls.

I see things I said long ago, with the date.

But I'm more interested in the paintings,

not what I said about them.

Is it daunting to have such a big exhibition?

I've had exhibitions before...

when I was much younger.

I had one in a gigantic space

in Houston, Texas.

I was wondering how we could eliminate the picture rails.

The curator, James Johnson Sweeney, said...

"Just hang the paintings. Suspend them."

I didn't like the word "suspend," but that's what we did.

We hung nylon wires and attached the paintings to them.

When you suspend paintings in space...

the viewer is free to compare one painting

with any other painting behind it, depending on the angle.

I found that idea so fascinating

that beginning in the 1960s...

I've done it a number of times.

On a wall, a painting is like a window.

But suspended from cables, it becomes an object.

And its status as an object

is expressed in its title, which gives its size.

I date them too, but the date isn't the title.

It's to distinguish between two different paintings

of the same size.

But the real title is the size.

WHY BLACK? BECAUSE.

You can see that this group of paintings

were all done with the same black.

People who don't look closely say...

"It's all black."

They have black on the brain.

But if they look with their eyes,

they realize it's about something else.

In fact, when I started doing these paintings,

I myself realized I wasn't working with black

but with light reflecting off different black surfaces.

It's shiny in some places...

muted in others.

Or maybe rhythmic. It depends.

ULTRABLACK

What's this passage from black to "ultrablack"?

I had a big exhibition at the Paris Museum of Modern Art.

We called it "Black Light."

I thought it was a good title,

but it bothered me a bit.

So I invented a word...

meaning "beyond black," "beyond black light."

That word was outrenoir.

Outrenoir signifies...

a mental space, not an optical phenomenon.

But it sounds like "outretombe," "beyond the grave."

Sure, and also —

- And outremer. - Or outre-Atlantique, outre-Rhin.

It signifies another land...

a land beyond black.

This triptych was shown at the Pompidou,

but it's among the work Soulages keeps in Sète.

It looks good here, facing the sea.

I prefer natural light to the Pompidou lighting,

which is spot lighting with no diffusers.

And here it's next to the sea.

The sea is reflected in it.

Today it's one color, but on another day —

One day a storm lit up the trees, and the painting turned green.

What emotions have you felt

that you've transmitted wordlessly through your paintings?

Why are some people moved to tears just looking at them?

I think...

it affects them somehow.

They're shaken up. They encounter something.

Jean-Claude Dugrip tells us about his experience.

He's cultural advisor to the mayor of Sète.

I was about 20.

- When was this? - 1987.

I was running a small gallery.

We thought it'd be nice to invite Soulages,

do something with him.

I went to see him in Paris, oddly enough.

He was very nice.

He showed me in, but he was busy.

So I waited an hour with his paintings.

At a certain point...

I was overcome with emotion.

I don't know how to describe it.

This isn't exactly the same,

but when I was young I'd listen to Albinoni's Adagio.

The first music that makes you cry.

The way you cry to Prévert's "Barbara." It was like that.

I never imagined a painting could have that effect.

That day I understood or I felt...

what he must have put into the black of his work.

That's what we feel.

If we spend some time letting the work penetrate us,

we're overcome with emotion.

This is where the artist works, in silence.

Painting on a tarp on the floor.

When I paint on the floor, I use these beams.

The bridge allows me...

to work directly on the canvas without walking on it.

- You never paint standing up? - Sure.

I'm always standing the painting up to check it.

I like to be immersed in the painting as I work.

Quite often I don't truly know if a painting is really finished...

until I set it against the wall for a week,

then look at it again.

There have been paintings...

I thought weren't finished yet...

and they declared themselves finished, so to speak.

There are others...

I consider failures, so I get rid of them.

I keep the frame

and burn the painting out here.

So this is the cemetery?

More the spot where I burn paintings.

The crematorium.

The idea is appealing,

and a burning painting makes an interesting spectacle.

- So these ashes are from...? - Failed attempts.

I like wood. I like rusted metal.

I like materials that are alive, that change.

I was walking along a dock,

and there were these enormous pieces of wood

imported from Africa.

I talked them into cutting me a slice.

It wasn't this color. It was originally red.

But there's the sea and spray...

salt in the winter, and the sun too.

The same sun shines on his neighbors,

the deceased in the cemetery by the sea.

Paul Valéry is buried here.

He sang of this cemetery...

and of the lateen sails like doves.

"This quiet roof, where dove-sails saunter by

Between the pines, the tombs, throbs visibly

Impartial noon patterns the sea in flame

That sea forever starting and restarting" You know that one?

"When thought has had its hour

How rewarding are the long vistas of celestial calm!"

Jean-Louis Trintignant is giving a poetry recital at the Seaside Theater.

I started out with a theme: love and death.

He chose works by Jacques Prévert, Boris Vian, and Robert Desnos.

"A poet is a being unique

Who comes in all allures

Who thinks in verse and writes in music

On many different things

Some red and some green

But always on the beat"

You chose poems

that speak to people.

I don't want it to be intellectual or elitist.

Boris Vian.

"First of all...

there's much merit in marrying a younger woman.

There's much merit in marrying a woman.

There's much merit in marrying.

Not to mention the merde!

Second of all...

there's much merit in marrying an older woman.

There's much merit in marrying a woman.

There's much merit in marrying.

Not to mention the merde!

Third of all...

there's much, much, much, much merde!

Not to mention the merit in marrying a woman."

I still continue on because I enjoy doing this,

but it's very hard for me to get to the stage.

Even to get to Sète.

Fortunately I have a younger wife who drives me.

And I have a cane!

There's one I didn't recite:

"From two moons one, the other is the sun."

Nice, isn't it? Prévert.

I hear the moon rose during the show. Did you see it?

- No, I only had eyes for you. - It depends where you're sitting.

I wanted to film a bit. I'll use a few excerpts.

I'm working these days with impressions, touches.

And you touched me.

Thank you. I'm touched to hear it.

This is getting touchy!

That's enough.

Thank you very much, Jean-Louis.

The Poetry Festival, created by Maïthé Vallès-Bled,

continues in an old chapel in town.

Palestinian poet Ghassan Zaqtan recites,

followed by his translator.

"The soldier that the patrol forgot in the garden...

the patrol that the border guards forgot at the barricade...

the barricade that the occupation army forgot

at the threshold..."

POETRY

In the Quartier Haut, in a secluded garden,

we await an Asian poet...

who isn't showing up.

Nadia Gerber plays Satie.

Music, the sea — what more do you need?

Here's my version of the seaside.

First... a photograph. It's like we're there.

We feel the splashing waves.

But it's a static image, flat, vertical, and silent.

Second... the photo continues on film.

It moves, it has sound.

Another type of representation.

Three... a bit of sand.

The reality of the beach, like at the seaside.

Noelle Tissier invited me to show my work at the CRAC in Sète.

THE SEA... ET-SÈTE-RA Thanks, Noelle.

She brought in sand...

and I'd filmed some at the beach.

Optical illusions.

The sea diffracted.

Broken up.

In dialogue with other works in the gallery:

Nicolas Floc'h and his Pelagic Tower.

I go out on the dock...

and visit the Calli brothers, Angel and Daniel.

One is a head fisherman.

The other is a netmaker.

Even if I don't go out to sea, I go see my boat.

- Where is it? - Right nearby.

- What's it called? - Eros Calli.

- Calli is your family name. - And Eros is my son's name.

- You named him Eros? - Yes.

- That's gutsy. - It's the god of love.

Your parents named you Angel.

Why?

Because of our Italian and Sicilian roots.

We take our grandfather's name.

So your grandfather was called Angel?

On both sides, paternal and maternal.

A netmaker's job

is making nets for trawlers.

He makes them new, buys nylon twine,

calculates the dimensions, and makes the net.

Based on the boat's size?

Based on its engine power.

Is he paid by the net or by the hour?

If he were paid by the hour, he'd be very, very rich.

- But unfortunately... - That's not the case.

He gets a percentage of the catch.

If there's a good catch and it sells well,

we make money and share it.

How many on board?

Four.

The netmaker's on board too. - How do you split it?

We split it 45/55.

When the catch is sold, we know what we've earned.

We subtract expenses and fuel.

Then we split it

55% for the boat,

45% for crew,

less tax.

If we don't catch or sell anything, we earn nothing.

You order nets from your brother?

Of course. If I need nets, I go to my brother.

I know what I'm getting. I know they'll be good.

A good net catches fish easily.

If the fish agree.

No fish wants to be caught, but some are more clever.

How do they get away?

They try to swim faster than the net.

A fish can move like you.

It stays out in front of the net, and you can't catch it.

It swims and swims.

If we put you in the water, after 10 hours you stop, exhausted.

By the time it's in the net, the fish has drowned.

It drowns before it's caught?

90% of all fish are dead when caught.

Really?

Leaving the net workshop,

I see many more nets on the dock.

These tools of their trade —

barrels, ropes, nets —

are displayed so beautifully...

they'd make certain installation artists red with jealousy.

We say "outsider art."

Could these be "outsider installations"?

And the simple creaking of a securely tied gangplank —

is that not the subtlest of music?