/ by maxime
29.04.2023
What a discovery. Pure poetry.
After studying fine arts in France, Cécile Fontaine ended up in Boston, USA. She did an internship for six months, but only returned to Paris 6 years later to work as an art teacher in primary education.
In Boston, she came into contact with experimental films by Jonas Mekas and Stan Brakhage, to name a few, and began her collage films, which she has continued to make until now.
Cinema Parenthèse will show her work on Sunday at Imal, and on Saturday, Cécile will reveal the inner workings of her practice at LABO BxL.
It is twofold. Wet and dry.
She wets found-footage films with water and corrosive detergent. This causes the film’s emulsion to loosen, allowing her to carefully scrape off the image material and place it on a new carrier. This is how she creates her double-exposure images. Two or infinitely many worlds come together and are set in motion again.
Dry, she uses simple Scotch tape. The film is taped to a table with double-sided tape, emulsion side up. A strip of tape is pressed firmly onto the film and then jerked off in small movements. This leaves the emulsion stuck to the tape and can be transferred to a new piece of film.
Both techniques require a thoughtful understanding of materials. Some film from the history of film technology works and comes loose quickly, while others are more fragile.