Aline Cézanne

Aline Cézanne

2010 · 20 min

“It begins with an exhibition at the French Institute in Munich. We had decided to create an installation together [with Vincent Barré] in the greenhouse of the Seyssel d’Aix palace: a tribute to Paul Cézanne and his final model, the gardener Vallier….We spoke about the project with one of Vincent’s childhood friends, Christine Toffin, who reminded us that she was related to the painter. Her aunt, the painter’s granddaughter, still lived at Bourron-Marlotte. We decided to go and film Aline Cézanne in her retirement home at Bourron-Marlotte….It was during the sound editing that we thought of making a film using the images we had shot for the sound. The framing is minimal – it’s fine as it is, but it was not set up with a film in mind. A year later, we went back to see Aline. Her speech had become more confused and we went off with her to the village to find the houses of her childhood.”

Directed by Vincent Barré

Your Rating

Make it a double feature

2h 4m together

Aline Cézanne

7 Walks with Mark Brown

Both from Vincent Barré.

More from Vincent BarréSee all →

7 Walks with Mark Brown

7 Walks with Mark Brown · 2025

7 Walks with Mark Brown

MovieDocumentary

Following the steps of an English botanist, in the landscapes of the Normandy coast, people and cameras look at flowers. This is an essay on attention and friendship, a cinematic herbarium.

Go, Toto!

Go, Toto! · 2017

MovieDocumentary

A film about belonging, gay rural life, physical labor & elderly bodies. The arrival of Toto the marcassin at Madeleine's house, Vincent's trip to India and his troubles with the monkeys, or Joseph's dreams provoked by the continuous pressure machine, are three stories that Pierre will share and that in one way or another summon up our relationship with the animal, with this other neighbor

Luxna

MovieScience FictionAnimation

A man named Tom, who as a young boy, was passionate about astronomy and always dreaming about outer space.

A Beautiful Summer

A Beautiful Summer · 2019

A Beautiful Summer

African immigrants start working on a farm in Normandy and hope to open their own restaurant someday.

A Prince

A Prince · 2023

The journey of a young man as he begins an apprenticeship in the French countryside to train as a gardener. There he encounters a trio of men who will prove decisive in both his nascent career as a horticulturist and in unleashing his sexuality.

I Am Pierre Creton, Normand and Filmmaker

I Am Pierre Creton, Normand and Filmmaker · 2023

I Am Pierre Creton, Normand and Filmmaker

MovieDocumentary

Portrait of the film-maker and visual artist Pierre Creton, who shoots films in the country of Caux, in Normandy, while taking on his agricultural tasks as a worker and farmer.

Le paysage pour témoin. Rencontre avec Georges-Arthur Goldschmidt

Le paysage pour témoin. Rencontre avec Georges-Arthur Goldschmidt · 2010

Le paysage pour témoin. Rencontre avec Georges-Arthur Goldschmidt

“When FACIM (Foundation for international cultural activities in mountain regions) called me to propose making a film about Georges-Arthur Goldschmidt, I didn’t know him as a writer, only a little as a translator. So I immediately read his books, Le Recours and Le Poing dans la bouche, published by Verdier, which moved me deeply….I didn’t write a script. The commission was to film Georges-Arthur Goldschmidt in the places he arrived at in France during the war, in Megève, and his relationship to the region, which is very present in his books. I filmed him from day to day over four days. On returning to the places of his childhood exile, he met the families who had helped him survive, people his own age who were children at the time, whose memories were reconstituted together.”

L'Arc D'Iris (Souvenir D'Un Jardin)

L'Arc D'Iris (Souvenir D'Un Jardin) · 2006

L'Arc D'Iris (Souvenir D'Un Jardin)

Three weeks of hiking in one of the highest-altitude places on earth: the Spirit Valley in the Himalayas. Two sequences of flowers picked like in herbarium, emphasized by the voice of villages and the chants of monasteries.

Deng Guo Yuan, in the garden

Deng Guo Yuan, in the garden · 2010

Deng Guo Yuan, in the garden

During a trip to China with Vincent to meet people in art schools and universities, I discovered the work of Deng Guo Yan, the director of the Tianjin school of contemporary art. A painting style that seemed to me to be a mix of traditional Chinese painting, Claude Monet and Cy Twombly, and which I liked. The black and white of his large ink brush paintings on paper, almost the size of a mural, made it possible for me to jump from black and white to colour in this film, as I had done in the Recueil but with other connotations: with excerpts from Jean Renoir in Aline Cézanne, photos of Le Havre destroyed in Papa, Maman, Perret et moi, and infrared images taken by Georges-Arthur Goldschmidt in Le Paysage pour témoin”.

Papa, maman, Perret et moi. Un appartement pour témoin

Papa, maman, Perret et moi. Un appartement pour témoin · 2010

Papa, maman, Perret et moi. Un appartement pour témoin

“This was, a priori, a more familiar commission, as I had lived in Le Havre – it’s actually the only town I know a little. And I’ve always liked the architecture of Auguste Perret…Annette Haudiquet, a curator at the Malraux museum, asked me to come to Le Havre. She had planned visits to different sites. We began with the Perret show-apartment, accompanied by the guides Elisabeth Chauvin and Pierre Gencey. We had lunch, I went to their home – they also live in a Perret apartment, arranged identically to the show-apartment. And I imagined the two of them with their son Vincent, as characters “acting” as the residents of the show-apartment. With this first idea, I accepted the commission: staging them as residents of the apartment when, in reality, they are the guides, between two realities, two epochs: the apartment that they live in and the one they show to people”.

A Short Treatise on Walking on the Plains

A Short Treatise on Walking on the Plains · 2014

A Short Treatise on Walking on the Plains

A walker who crosses three regions: Vattetot-sur-mer in the Pays-de-Caux region, Saint-Firmin-des-Bois in the Gâtinais region, and Carrouge in Switzerland, drawing an imaginary geographical thread between the places where we live and the place where Gustave Roud spent time on his family farm in the Pays-de-Vaux region. This film was inspired by Gustave Roud’s text, whose title we have borrowed. Travelling through landscapes, looking closely at the tiny and changing forms of nature, meeting living beings – animals and people.

Detour followed by Jovan from Foula

Detour followed by Jovan from Foula · 2005

Detour followed by Jovan from Foula

“It was on Foula, the furthest island from the main island [Shetland Isles], that we ran into Jovan. Or rather he ran into us, coming off the ferry late in the day. The mist was thick and we looked worn-out. He took us under his wing and offered to show us around the island the following day. There is a long sequence shot of the passing scenery, taken from inside his car. Driving along the only road, Jovan pointed out to Vincent the island’s disarray: abandoned cars and tractors, heaps of rusting scrap metal. Then on another island, Papa Stour, with a view of Foula, we filmed what was to become the first part of the film.”

More Like This

Couldn't load this row right now.

Rate this film

Your ratings make Midnight smarter