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Over Your Cities Grass Will Grow

France, Netherlands, United Kingdom

2010

105 Min

Color

2.35:1

English, German, French

Currently 3.6/5 Stars.
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PROD Sophie Fiennes, Kees Kasander, Émilie Blézat

DP Sophie Fiennes, Remko Schnorr

CAST Anselm Kiefer, Klaus Dermutz

SOUND Bram Boers

Cannes (Special Screening), Melbourne (Our Spaces), Toronto (Visions), Rotterdam (Spectrum), Göteborg (Visionärer)

Synopsis

The film bears witness to German artist Anselm Kiefer’s alchemical creative processes and renders as a film journey the personal universe he has built at his hill studio estate in the South of France. In 1993 Kiefer left Buchan, Germany for La Ribotte, a derelict silk factory near Barjac. From 2000 he began constructing a series of elaborate installations there, comprising 48 buildings, a labyrinth of tunnels, bridges, lakes and towers. Traversing this landscape, the film immerses the audience in the total world and creative process of one of today’s most significant artists. Shot in cinemascope, the film constructs visual set pieces alongside observational footage to capture both the dramatic resonance of Kiefer’s art and the intimate process of creation. This polarity – in terms of scale, sensibility and time – animates the film, creating a multi-layered narrative through which to navigate the complex spaces of La Ribotte. Here creation and destruction are interdependent; the film enters into direct contact with the raw materials Kiefer employs to build his paintings and sculptures – lead, concrete, ash, acid, earth, glass and gold…

Director

Sophie Fiennes

Sophia Victoria Twisleton Wykeham-Fiennes (pron.: /ˈfaɪnz/; born 12 February 1967), known as Sophie Fiennes, is an English film director and producer.

Career

Following a foundation course in painting at Chelsea School of Art, Fiennes worked with director Peter Greenaway from 1987–1992. She managed the UK based dance company, The Michael Clark Company from 1992–1994 and began making her own films in 1998. With Greenaway she worked on films and TV projects including Drowning by Numbers, The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover and Prospero’s Books. She was commissioned by BBC 2’s radical arts series TX to make a film about her friend and collaborator Michael Clark. It was screened at film festivals in Monaco, Toronto and Sydney.

Films

Because I Sing

The London contemporary arts organisation Artangel and Channel 4 (UK) commissioned the work. This film of Belgium choreographer Alain Platel’s Artangel London event brought sixteen diverse amateur London… read more

Sophia Victoria Twisleton Wykeham-Fiennes (pron.: /ˈfaɪnz/; born 12 February 1967), known as Sophie Fiennes, is an English film director and producer.

Career

Films

Because I Sing

Hoover Street Revival

Fiennes’ feature documentary about a Pentecostal church in Los Angeles, was shot over the period of a year in South Central LA. It is an account of the charismatic ministry of Noel Jones in the Greater Bethany Church in Los Angeles. It was released theatrically in the UK June 2003 and screened in festivals Edinburgh, Adelaide, Israel, Amsterdam and London and in the USA at Egyptian Theatre, Redcat & Sundance Channel.

Show and Tell

Made for ZDF/Arte is about Les Ballets C. de la B.’s dance performance VSPRS. A the dimensions of ecstasy and trauma that form the core of the performance are captured, whilst interviews with Platel and the dancers themselves are also included.

The Pervert’s Guide to Cinema

Fiennes’ documentary The Pervert’s Guide to Cinema, is written and presented by the philosopher and psychoanalyst, Slavoj Žižek. It was described by Time Out London as “essential viewing for cinephiles”. Žižek delves into the hidden language of cinema, exploring what movies tell us about ourselves. Fiennes latest project was a feature documentary on Grace Jones.

Fiennes and Žižek have completed shooting on a followup, The Pervert’s Guide to Ideology. The format is similar, with Žižek speaking from within reconstructed scenes from films. This time around, the films include Full Metal Jacket, Taxi Driver, They Live and The Sound of Music.

Family

She is the daughter of photographer Mark Fiennes and novelist/painter Jini Fiennes (Jennifer Lash), and the sister of Ralph, Martha, Magnus, Joseph and Jacob Fiennes. Her foster brother, Michael Emery, is an archaeologist.

Awards

Sophie Fiennes was awarded a NESTA fellowship in 2001. —Wikipedia

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Annie Gentil

11May13

Interesting to see the Art created by German artist Anselm Kiefer in his derelict workshop in Barjac, the South of France. The documentary gives you an insight into his life and work, giving you space and time to see his artistic universe and the practicalities to create such imposing masterpieces.

Flying Dutchman

31May12

The TV arts doc is so grimly formulaic, trapped by the trend for biography, celebrity commentators and remits for accessibility, this contemplative documentary is a revelation. We are given the opportunity to experience the artwork up close and as sensually as the medium allows with little distraction. Entertained not by narrative but by art. The filmmaker cunningly turns the production of the art into art itself.

Cat likes this

msmichel

6Jan12

top 20 of 2011 number 19

Matthew_Lucas

4Aug11

Strange, modernist artist Anselm Kiefer gets a strange modernist documentary in this abstract appreciation of his work in an abandoned silk factory in Barjac, France. Like something out of a post-apocalyptic landscape, his work rises up like derelict buildings from the ashes. Mostly observational, but also incredibly dry, the film alternates between beautiful tracking shots and aimless moments of languid tedium.