Philippe Cote Day

Philippe Cote lived and worked in Paris. He made over 20 Super 8 films beginning in 1998 which were screened in festivals and film series in France and other countries. He curated experimental films programs and was on the selection commitee of the Festival International des Cinemas Differents et Experimentaux in Paris. He was a member of the film cooperative L’Etna, an artisanal and member-run film development laboratory founded in 1997 in Paris

A filmmaker with a sensitive and radical vision, his earlier works focused on the themes of the body, matter, light and color with techniques that range from cameraless filmmaking to painting on celluloid. After 2005, he moved towards a poetic and contemplative approach to documentaries and travel films.

For Philippe Cote, cinema revealed itself as a space of self-invention and of the other one, plastic exploration of the limits of subjectivity and an attempt to establish links. In a desire to take a permanent risk, his work wove and transformed from one film to another, seeking what occurs in the gaze’s movement, constantly transformed by the prints. — Violeta Salvatierra

 

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Stills

 

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Further

Philippe Cote | Cinéaste
Philippe Cote @ Facebook
Philippe Cote @ Dérives autour du cinéma
Philippe Cope @ l’Etna
Philippe Cote @ Collectif Jeune Cinéma
Carte blanche à Philippe Cote : Cinéma visionnaire, cinéma poétique

 

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Notes on a film in the making (2008)
by Philippe Cote

I look at my images, in search of an experience, a story, a feeling… perhaps a sketch of a future film.

The shadows

An alley filmed at night, a line of light is reflected on the ground and exposes a certain part of the image. A young woman enters it, with a hesitant gait. Throughout the journey, it reveals itself and escapes our gaze, passes into the light or disappears into the dark.

Other shots of narrow streets framed by houses, buildings… vanishing lines where ghostly silhouettes are born and vanish, of an elsewhere that is not in the present of the filming.

Certain motifs return… a residence, an entrance, a small balcony. Through these identical returns, a curious reversal takes place where these images seem to challenge us, to look at us from a place, from a time that escapes us. In the dark, in the distance, a screen of light, in which spectra with ill-defined contours are inscribed before dissolving. On the front, in the shade, we guess a presence… texture of a mirror reflection, which we revisit later in these passing shadows which are reflected on the water, an upward movement begins the crossing of the mirror and reveals the surrounding landscape: a river, banks, a city.

Lighting plans

A street vendor, people surround his stall cluttered with heterogeneous objects. There is a clock. Onlookers wander around, without a precise trajectory, leaving and entering the field. The merchant grabs a pair of sunglasses, puts them on. Finally, he spits violently on the ground.

A boy repairs a bicycle.

In the background, behind him, appear children, teenagers, out of school, who gradually invade the space occupied by the young man… duration redefines a new division in the image, displaces its meaning. This foliation inside the image is found in this shot where a religious painting appears on a wall and next to it the unfolding of a street, a place of passage.

The edges

A coffee counter, two people installed on the left edge of the frame… for the rest, our gaze stumbles on the back wall… these people discuss passionately with one or more people who have remained outside the frame.

A boat, three young men leaning on their elbows, we can’t make out their faces… there, they are inscribed on the right edge of the frame, looking in the same direction, taking photos, towards places that remain secret to us.

A market, tools, objects placed on the ground. Filmed from above, on one side, we can see half of the saleswoman’s face, on the other the hand and arm of a buyer… in the center the place of the transaction, immutable, disturbed for a moment by a person who crouches… the shot ends abruptly with the end of the reel.

Presence of the off-screen, duration, strangeness of the composition there, transport of the center of gravity towards the edges, open up new adventures of the gaze.

Your loneliness

Self-portrait of the filmmaker.

Lying down, the camera frames her body leaving an empty space at her side. The speed of recording imparts a jerky movement to his breathing, comparable to shortness of breath. He gets up abruptly to sit on the edge of the bed before disappearing into the white of the overexposure of the end of the reel.

The inside

Inside a bedroom, a small open skylight in one of the walls of the room lets us guess something else, differently, in the form of the blue of the sky, the white of the buildings. Then, in an upward movement, our gaze slowly advances towards this opening, a desirous attempt to abolish the distance that separates us from this elsewhere.

A window is open, a person enters the frame, leans over, then closes it… at the end, only a thin thread of light remains.

The trace

The detail of a wall: a white square with a tortuous surface, then another square, in black and white and in color, cracked, indented… posters, announcing a religious festival, partially block the surface.

A wall overlooks a street. We distinguish a fresco: a Christ on the cross and the name of the street Castelar. It receives the projected shadows of passers-by, surrounding houses… the shadows move with the sun.

A degraded wall and an opaque window.
Screen surface that supports shadows, pages open to the world traversed by the traces of time, limits dotted with various openings like so many calls to future promises.

Epilogue

This Sunday, at a fair, I acquired an old batch of super 8 films, on one of the boxes was written Andalusia.

 

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14 of Philippe Cote’s 28 films

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Émergences (1999-2004)
‘Resulting from performance projections of films painted directly on film. The film literally confronts pure abstraction and the unrolling of the film loaded with materials.’ — Philippe Cote

 

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Ether (2003)
‘Liquefied images are transformed into substances of volatile light. The eye has no hold on shapes with an unstable contour. By successive generations, these gradually rush into different states of color until they become incarnated in the completion of an image.’ — Collectif Jeune Cinema

 

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L’en dedans / les ombres (2005)
‘Crossing of the frame and passage inside.
The image is transformed, reconstructed and revealed by concrete and unstable movements, elementary forms, lines of force, points of light and deep blacks.
The film oscillates between constituents of the image (grain, line …) and its representation, revealing underground and forgotten figures.’ — Derives

 

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L’ange du monde (2006)
‘The angle of the world allows us to see the real as an outer and inner presence at the same time, an opaque otherness, yet capable of becoming an intimate space. These incommensurable lengths and distances of an interior that opens up: The mysterious movement of the clouds, the cadence of the waves against the light, or the silent slippage of a barely identifiable human silhouette, everything seems transfigured, derealized and reinvented by light in a poetic world that evokes the paintings of Turner or Friedrich, the writings of Poe or Baudelaire.’ — Violeta Salvatierra

 

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Des nuages aux fêlures de la terre (2007)
Du noir et blanc, puis une teinte entre couleur et noir et blanc
Vert bronze
Du grain de la gravure de la photo c’est fixe puis on sait qu’on regarde du cinéma
Le temps de l’invention de l’image photographique nous est à nouveau présent nous revient en mémoire
Ether toujours
Géométrie de la terre et géométrie du nuage le sens des nuages
Ça donne envie de lire des pages sur les nuages on en a écrit tant de toutes sortes littérature art plastique philosophie science cinéma et d’autres
Tous les domaines de la rêverie et de la réflexion humaine ont été innervés par ces vagues voluptueuses
Tous ont été surfaces reflétantes miroitantes
Le cinéma seul montre ces voyages ces défilements
Le bleu soudain et l’étoile à la lucarne
Géométrie des formes lignes rayures triangles rectangles noirs blancs
Monts noirs monts blancs en miroir reflets du ciel
Puissance du gris nuances des commencements
Cîmes
Regards tendus corps de la lumière silhouettes furtives
Effacements successifs
On peut ouvrir grand les paupières
Si l’on veut.
— Catherine Bareau

 

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Va regarde (2008)
‘… I go to Thailand and then to northern Laos (Luang Prabang then normally further north), surely then to Cambodia. At the origin of this departure, it is an aspiration in a renewal of my cinema, in the search for new lights, new spaces, new relationships … I initiated it with my film L ‘ ANGLE OF THE WORLD turned on the islands dear to Jean Epstein, others will follow … Let’s say to a cinema closer to the poetic documentary: to be there and to look, to inscribe the duration, not to try to force the things that present themselves. I am dreaming of the images of Peter Hutton (Images of Asian Music and André Sauvage (iconoclastic documentary filmmaker, who knew how to film these countries with love and humanity in the 1930s). Touching this point of contact between a personal reality (let us say of the order of the intimate) and this otherness present in front of oneself Space of the others) …’ — Philippe Cote, May 2006

 

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Va regarde 2 (2009)
At the origin of these departures,
There is aspiration in a renewal
Of my cinema, in the search for new lights,
New spaces, new relationships …
Towards a cinema closer to the poetic documentary:
Be there and watch, record the duration, not
Seek to force the things that present themselves …
— Philippe Cote, May 2006

 

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19, Espíritu Santo (Andalucía) (2010)
‘Originally, there were the words you wrote to me to initiate the images to make, far away, alone, over there in Seville and Andalusia. Then, after a silent first montage …: “I wanted (this is the first time that it happens to me in front of one of your films) to hear voices. In spite of myself I thought of a sonorous montage, made of long silent beaches alternating with a few moments of voice, words, and perhaps a little sound, rustling. It seemed to me that this way of sounding the film gives a presence (presences) whose function would be mainly to invite to listen to the images. It would also give more alterity to the object … ” The film then found its definitive form, an intimate and shared essay between your voice, choices of poems read, listening, and my images.’ — Philippe Cote

 

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Orissa (2010)
‘The story of an encounter…’

 

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Le Voyage Indien (Partie 1 & 2) (2011)
‘The film unfolds in parallel the images of two travels to India and Nepal, following one itinirary and two crossings. 8mm images, shot by an annonymous traveler at the beginning of the seventies and that I discovered at a flea market, punctuate my own Super8 images that I shot at the occasion of recent stays in 2008 and 2011. Some post production ambiant sound, recorded on site during the shoot, have sometimes been added on top of the orginal footages. Others remain silent. The film exposes instants revealed by a gaze caught in a geography dreamed by the author. Not a travel journal.. but travel as the desire for a poetry of sound and image.’ — Philippe Cote

 

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Images de l’eau (2012)
‘This film describes different forms and manifestations of water. The experience of the filmmaker’s body immersed in water, sunken into the liquid element, represents the main theme of this poetic essay on the imagination of this element.’ — CJC

 

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Jardin d’été (2012)
‘A moment spent in a garden. Bursts of light, flowers tremble, life passes.’ — Philippe Cote

 

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Le Chemin des glaces (2013)
‘By feet, by boat, by train, this film, shot in super 8mm, leads us from the old New York to the snowed and iced lands, farther in the North, through a white progression.’ — CJC

 

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Timanfaya (2015)
‘Lanzarote, a volcanic island in the Canaries was shaped in the 18th century by a series of eruptions. It preserves its memory through semi-desert mineral landscapes.

‘In 2015, I traveled this territory in search of cataclysm. In this devastated landscape, traces of a return to life were emerging.’ — Philippe Cote

 

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p.s. Hey. ** Dominik, Hi!!! Well, on the bright side, they have a lovely place to come visit you? Sorry, I’m an eternal optimist. Yes, true about headphones and the personal experience. I think maybe I really like that too. No, love didn’t help me out yesterday, but I forgot we had a big zoom meeting at dinnertime, so it wasn’t his fault. Maybe tonight. That song is about strawberries? But, honestly, I’ve only heard the song once, as impossible as that seems, ha ha. Love making one of the people in charge of our film turn into a decent human being, which is unfortunately a task so impossible that I fear even love can’t handle it, G. ** tomk, Hi! First, huge congrats on the Big Other prize nomination! So heartening! Fingers very, very crossed about the job prospects. Very nice that you have that trip in the offing if nothing else. Let me know when ‘Hiktum’ has its release date. Fantastic! I can’t wait for you to see the film. Zac and I are so excited about it. Love, me. ** David Ehrenstein, Agree, agree, and thank you so much for sharing your wisdom. ** Cody Goodnight, I’m … let’s say good. It’s a really treat-like novel. I, of course, agree with you about ‘Daughters of Darkness’ to the T. The Anne Francis/mannequins episode is one that has stayed forever in my memory. ‘Fallen Angels’ is my favourite WKW film. I hope you like it. I would say you had a pretty rich day, man, especially compared to mine which was just film editing from top to bottom. Happiest today! ** Dee Kilroy, Hi there, Dee! Fascinating research you’re doing there, needless to say. I totally get you about the script writing. The lure and nag. I’m looking forward to starting a new one when the film is locked in. I only wrote one script for a graphic novel, and the challenges were super interesting. Not totally unlike film writing, but the total freedom at other, illustrative end was quite inspiring. Thanks! ** Misanthrope, I’m glad you do. I like how superhero movies make time semi-fly by on flights, but otherwise not much. I am curious to see that new Spiderman animation thing. Diligence is always a great approach. Just so long as it doesn’t get infected by procrastination. ** alex, Hey, alex! I’m good, just editing editing almost non-stop, but hugely enjoying it. Oh, right, those fires in Canada. Strange how when you’re physically far away from something like that you forget about it as soon as the news media loses interest. I can juggle multiple projects, or at least two at a time, but one of them is always using up about 90% of the oxygen. And the others need to be different enough to be places to escape. I’m doing the blog while consumed with the film work for instance, although I must say putting together the blog posts is much harder right now. I haven’t read Sarah’s ‘The Child’, no. I don’t think I ever know about it. Huh, I’ll investigate when time arrives. Lovely to talk with you. ** _Black_Acrylic, It’s a goodie. I really think you’d like it. ** john christopher, Bowles’s prose is pretty delicious. Joy Williams wrote about her? Wow. I gotta try to find that. I had to google search quorn, so, no, I haven’t tried it. I wonder if you can buy it over here. Probably. I’m way, way behind on movies right now because I literally have no non-film editing time, but that’ll ease up. I watched a bunch of Philippe Cote’s films while making this post, and I really liked them. ‘O Fantasia’s’ great, yeah. I don’t know who the other lad is. I wonder if anyone knows? Take care. ** Jim Pedersen, Hi, Jim! Oh, how interesting about the grandmother. Has anything been written about her? How are you? Amazing, I hope. ** Jeff J, Hi, Jeff. I have read some of her short stories. They’re terrific. I haven’t read her play, no. Cool about Song Cave. I’m ready anytime. Oh, yes, Saturday is good. What time works? Same as last time? ** Brian O’Connell, Howdy, Brian. I find it hard to believe those submersible people are still alive, yeah. Horrifying. That sounds like pretty much nothing but bright side from here too. You have to justify using the funds? I mean, it sounds pretty justifiable? But I’m not a school official by any means. I liked the opening section of ‘Annette’, and I love it once the puppet became the centerpiece. I was less into the middle, relationship centric section. But I understand that Carax was kind of forced to emphasise that by Netflix. But, yeah, it was a very audacious film, and that’s good enough for me. Enjoy those films. I’ll be watching a film assemble, which should be pretty good too. ** Okay. Today the blog concentrates on the late French filmmaker Philippe Cote who made very beautiful, very personal short films mostly using Super8. I think you might find them dreamy if you give them a look, but who knows. See you tomorrow.