The Seven Saisons – Les Sept Saisons about the works of Cécile Bart

FR 2002

Les Sept Saisons, has been selected as one of the ten best films of 2002 by Image mouvement of the Centre national de la Cinématographie.

The Seven Saisons by Christian Besson 2002
The film opens with the voice of its director, Nathalie David:

From one autumn to the next I visited various exhibitions of Cécile Barts work. What transpired were images and then, somewhat later, a montage that I called The Seven Seasons.

The voice is discreetly accompanied, if not carried, by the electronic music of Olivier Lukaszczyk, which returns later in several sequences. Unscrolling with the title credits, so many suggestive details taken from each of the seasons that also provide a fragmentary and partial summary Annies voice, the starlings at Marsannay, the sound of colours, openings, cotton thread, the leap in the air, the shadows of branches. No intention whatsoever, it seems, to precisely account for the seven captured moments. Nonetheless, in spite of this detailed evocation, the film ends leaving the viewer with a fairly good idea of the seven shooting sequences at Anvers, Marsannay-la-Côte, Otterndorf, Nîmes, Paris, Strasbourg and Villeurbaine  the cameras extreme subjectivity and the films impressionistic lighting by no means prohibit documentary precision when it comes to describing how the paintings/screens are made in the studio or defining the colours Bart has used. Fully in the service of a mode of painting whose hallmark is the way it changes depending on the light, the point of view and the time of the day, this film consequently restores to it a kind of temporal duration. Montage interweaves the rhythm of the images with that of the sound. Slow-motion sequences and fixed perspective, as well as acoustic blanks and syncopated black frames, echo the inertia and muteness of the painted Terylene gauze. It is not that the film-maker somehow remembered the sounds, the resonance Kandinsky detected in each colour, but perhaps it is the sound of colour  the title of the second sequence  that provides the key to Nathalie Davids aesthetic approach. It was after listening to Bachs Goldberg Variations that she had the idea of ordering the films images and soundtrack in the form of a rhythmical suite in seven variations.

As if echoing Cécile Barts painting  abstract painting that deliberately faces the world and offers the visitor or the passer-by an unbridled display of its role  Nathalie David has also populated her film, be it with the sound of voices, languages or numerous accents. She has allowed her lens to be distracted by oblique glances at the ground or the windows. And the final image fades away against the clamour from the street outside.

Painting has to be seen, Niele Toroni said on more than one occasion. This documentary does not claim to replace a direct encounter with Cécile Barts work. Instead it offers its own materiality, density and rhythm of filmic image and montage. Besides which, beyond the works specific purpose, I would not be surprised to learn that Nathalie Davids ambition is to gain new insight into documentary film as a genre and a specific work process.

Just one more thing! In my opinion this has more to do with cinema than with video. Should you need persuading, just project her film onto a good, large screen and you’ll understand that this is light years away from a fast-food clip.


Documentary
Written & Directed by: Nathalie David

Original Score: Olivier Lukaszczyk
Cinematography & Editing: Nathalie David
Sound Recording & Mix: Luc Adami, John O. Kröger
Voice Over: Nathalie David

Funded by:
Image Mouvement des Centre National de la Cinématographie
L’Office Dijon, France

Screenings & Exhibitions
2008: MAC/VAL – Musée d’Art Contemporain du Val-de-Marne
2004: Artsteppe, Annecy
2003: Les Sept Saisons, Carré St. Anne, Montpellier
MAMCO – Musée d’Art Moderne et Contemporain, Genève
2002: École des Beaux-Arts, Dijon
Cinémathèque du Centre Pompidou, Paris