Cécile Fontaine

"View from my window shot through a second lens hand-held in front of the camera." -CF

"View from my window shot through a second lens hand-held in front of the camera." -CF

Rural images taken from a few pictures mixed with an audio track of identical sounds.

Third chapter of a series beginning with CHUTES and REEL.

Fleeting images of Soho in New York, shot in 1998 with a camera hand held along the body, capturing parts of passer by met along the way, and flanking a part on the Brooklyn bridge following the rhythm of my steps cut by several turns around myself.

A collage of various elements of 35 mm leaders manually displaced and reorganized has been slowly scanned and animated in a short sequence in which the short strip runs through the screen before being transformed by video editing.

Pieces of emulsion from 35mm leader rearranged on its surface then scanned and edited on video to create abstract patterns.

A young woman watches a man having a nap under the trees, and gets ready to paint. Trees are cut one after another by vigorous loggers. Insects stand motionless or crawl everywhere. All those are interlaced with more fleeting images that anyone could see or not.

Criss crossing of images from professionnal (16 documentaries) and amateur (8mm home and holiday movies) filmmakers juxtaposing different geographical areas peopled or locals or tourists inactivities of hard work or leisure.

Pictures from a black and white documentary on the life in fresh water, recomposed on the celluloïd ribbon by collage frames by frames to form new figures ... repeating itself at regular intervals, like variations of a same motif.

Promotional films and educational films. Ambiguity of a company that takes the child to one side as the target of commercial propaganda, and the other as the object of a preventive and security debate.

Commissioned for the film event exibition on the subject of the "Apocalysm" in cinema, this found footage film is essentialy constructed around the strongly altered images of ball-trap sequences for a demonstration film on fire-arms, humorously juxtaposed to images of innocence illustrated by children type drawings on seasonal tales and by fragments of two advertisings films : one on a natural reservation in the Seychelles Islands; the other, a "cartoon", for raincoats, related to the biblical flood.

A rush sequences (rushes) from different sources: fiction, documentaries and commercials. This film features hunts of all kinds, in the mythical scenery of the American West.

Blink, blink, flicker, flicker, flicker, flicker.

1 - Observe carefully and secretly (someone, an animal) - spy on a suspicious person spy - to follow someone to watch - spin, track, monitor - Animal spying on his prey - watch - Prowling, to alert. 2 - Observe carefully... scrutinize... (in The Oxford Dictionary).

Tourism in the Seychelles 'islands,under-water shots of marine life,facts from educational slides,bleached Ektachrome films,16 mm frames,super 8 strips,these are the images and material which led us from the seaport to the plate.We look at the sea world through the layers and juxtaposition of taped strips of emulsion from various sources

Recollections specifically memories of some family rituals of Sunday Mass, the family meals sometimes turned into picnic, afternoon at the seaside Correspondence places and events.. Similarities in attitudes.

A new take on the idea of camera-less film-making; a project originally undertaken with Light, with the introduction of a new element this time around: the successive exposure of three torn pieces of film, manually advanced past the gate of the cassette and exposed to a light source in order to create a series of abstract luminous pulsations. The original was blown up to 16mm in 2001.

In principle of repetition of a fragment, CHARLOTTE is close to [Fontaine's earlier film] La fissure.

Color work after separation and recomposition of the different colored layers of a documentary (found) in the Paris performance of a Japanese group of butoh dancers.

Official visits and their rituals;manipulated black and white found footage of a professional indian reel news with my father's amateur film of the more or less similar type of official events in the french oversea region where I grew up.

A collage film in three parts, interlacing films through genres and sources of various eras.

A film by Cécile Fontaine.

Film made for the filmaker's almanach, a project of Owen O'Toole. Film based on the progress/unrolling of a (typical) day in my life from the early hour of the morning. Full of the daily errands to the evening on my way to work in the suburbs of Paris.

"Abstract" film built by flat bands.

The film reflects a transformation which results in its destruction.

As the title reveals it, this film belongs to a larger multi media project imagined by the artist filmaker Maurice Lemaître, around the theme of the irreversible. Besides the requirement of shooting at the exhibition site of part two of the same project by Hélène Richol, I was free to respond to the concept as I felt it; and according to my usual way of working, I played with materiality of the original footage, manipulating it to its point of no return. By the same time I was also to turn over the meaning of the word, the irreversible became reversible through the flipping of the emulsion right to left, top to bottom, front to back.

First personal experience with a Super-8 camera manually exposing film out of any light source.

Retrieving a family movie of the 50's bought in a shop of second-hand objects. After being filmed in black and white, the original was decomposed and recomposed by gluing the new black and white support.

One of the first Super 8 made from materials by my father (home movie of the 70's) which emulsion has been peeled up from its base and saped on a new surface, in a different manner.

Recycled footage from commercial films, which the film-maker has manipulated by removing the layer of emulsion and reconfiguring it on the transparent substrate of the film base.

Film created by off camera light projection and bonding foreign emulsion layers (Super 8 and 35mm).

Inspired by Len Lye. Contacts of torn film segments, representing the head of a man with cap.

Three-part short film. Contains: "L'atelier de peinture" Live action combine with manipulation of the film by bleaching or displacing the emulsion side and with collage of acetate or 35mm slides; "Church": Live action manipulated with «ammonia base detergent»; "Subject:Sound Color Picture": Found Footage recut into S-8mm and edited on the academy leader structure.

Bleached S8 film shot by myself and recovered with new's paper prints and pulp.

Décollage, décalage et (re)collage de l'émulsion sur des fragments d'un film publicitaire trouvé.

A film by Cécile Fontaine

"Film combining short sequences shot with the camera by myself and short ones created on underexposed materials manipulated with the artist's tools or coming from reels shot by my father. It's a "suite" of visual experiments cut with an overexposed self-portrait." -CF

One of the first experiment with the camera and with the editing splicer. A fast edited film using materials from several 3min films shot in the streets of Boston.

SELF-PORTRAIT Nº 2 (RÉVEIL) is the second self-portrait where the Super 8 camera was held at an arm's length. As in the first self-portrait, this resulted in extreme close-ups, in this case of me as I get out of bed. As in the first one, the scene is intercut with images of various administrative documents: identity cards, school IDs, a blood type card... that are in my name - the only colorful elements in this rather grainy black and white film.

One of my very first films, for which I hold the camera at arm's length and thereby capture fragmentary and very close images of myself washing my face or combing my hair; all interspersed with photos at different ages.