Patrick Bokanowski

Reworked and colored images of people playing at the seashore.

Walking towards the fire. In a ceaseless stream of light, people, landscapes and objects lead us to mysterious regions. French filmmaker Patrick Bokanowski’s work is hard to classify - and all the richer for it. Together with his wife Michèle, whose musique concrète compositions form the basis of the sound design, Bokanowski offers a prolonged, dense and visually visceral experience of the kind that is rare in cinema today. Difficult to define and locate, its strangeness is quite unique.

A housewife is preparing a duck à l'orange in her kitchen. But the reluctant bird tries to escape from her but the woman manages to recaptures it and plucks it savagely. Once the duck is put in the oven, an alligator unexpectedly appears in the kitchen, threatening the cook.

The climbing of an immense staircase made up of the most varied stairs. Symbolic scenes occur on different levels where characters seem to be prisoners of their deeds and of their own folly. The steep staircase leads little by little towards the zones of great light where human beings and nonhuman beings meet.

Relentlessly reworking ‘real’ images, using techniques borrowed from painting and animated film, Patrick Bokanowski is an author of stature, capable of creating an insane and cataclysmic universe of unquestionable beauty.

Choreography of an imaginary journey.

Experimental film by Patrick Bokanowski.

Memories split in the space.

2018 short film by Patrick Bokanowski

Behold the struggle between light and dark, the two principles that are at the very heart of the cinematic deed. A Solar Dream takes the seventh art’s ability to generate imaginary and phantasmagorical worlds to the limit, multiplied here by Michèle Bokanowski’s enveloping music. A precious plastic and sonic gem.

Bokanowski returns to the complex - and mind-bending - optical array of pinholes, mirrors, prisms, and refractive substrates of his earlier film, La Plage to create the whimsical and playful Au bord du lac. The film is composed of mundane, everyday scenes of recreation and leisure on an idyllic, sunny day at a park that overlooks a lake - rowing a boat, playing a game of volleyball, rollerskating, bicycling, reading a newspaper, sunbathing, riding on horseback, or strolling on the promenade - shot through optical distortions to create fractured and knotted images that resemble embellished, gothic fairytale illustrations or appear to resolve into morphing, geometric patterns of fluid motion. Evoking the vibrant colors and sun-soaked palette of an invigorated Vincent van Gogh in Arles, Bokanowski transforms the quotidian into an infinitely mesmerizing dynamic kaleidoscope of shape-shifting textures and self-reconstituting objects of organic, abstract art.

A painter in his studio: his pencils, brushes, tubes, table, easel and drawings set themselves in motion in an explosion of colors and flashes of light.

A Creator of the Imaginary: Patrick Bokanowski

Film directed from the play "Orpheon", directed by François Tanguy, played by the Compagny of Raft.

Crossing through darkness towards the light.

Dreamlike sea bathing and horse rides. Colors take the plunge, the horizon blazes, breaking waves pound endlessly. A strange journey through depths of sound and vision.

In his film studio, Patrick BOKANOWSKI talks about his research (audiovisual and animation techniques) for his new project ("L'Ange" which will be released in 1982). Filming scenes, and excerpts from his short film "Lunch in the morning," punctuate the interview. On a film set, Patrick BOKANOWSKI describes some scenes of his project, notably "the attack of the castle of the egg"; it evokes the influence of the painter Henri DIMIER, of which he was the apprentice, his research on photographic printing, optical systems of shooting, and objectives. - He comments on a sketch of preparation explaining the image sought, and the means implemented. - Images of the shooting of scenes of characters in the darkness and light beams, accompanied by music, punctuate the interview.

Colette Aboulker Muscat has taught Waking Dream for the past forty years in Jerusalem. To each person who comes for a consultation, she offers a short story leading to a waking dream, equal in intensity to a night dream. The surprise provoked by the story, and the shortness of the treatment are, for her, essential aspects of the process. The mental imagery itself allows one to overcome a problem or an illness.

"The blue gallop of remembrance.." (Apollinaire)

A study of human anxieties about beauty, youth and objectification.

"The Role of Chance" ("La part du hasard") focuses exclusively on drawing and painting techniques used by the painter Henri Dimier. Shot over several weeks in the same artist's studio, the film shows works in their different phases, processes rarely explained or little known. It also addresses many practical issues (choice of paper, pigment grinding, reports drawings, put the tiles, cliches, etc) as well as broader questions of method and inspiration (use of space, the role of contours, power of suggestion perspectives, use of random processes). Patrick Bokanowski sought with this film to restore the spirit of this teaching, showing how to bend a note or sometimes revealing an essential mystery of creation.

Painted on 35 mm film, this is my first film. (PB)