This film is about the creative process – with all its uncertainty, rambling contradictions and maddening inefficiencies – which makes it potentially uncomfortable viewing for anyone who’s ever agonised over a creative project. But fear not, for this is a quirky and joyful Montreal-based film laced with thoughtfulness and humour, which will make it a strong contender for RIDMs audience choice awards.
The film sets out to follow the development and execution of an avant-garde theatre piece. And it’s the theatre director and main player in the film, Gabriel, that carries the show with his meandering and spontaneous ways, drawing inspiration from the unlikeliest places and scenarios. HIs ability to embrace chaos and the absurd seems boundless and his energy almost unrelenting.
The theatre piece and then the film’s topic is the Greek myth Sisyphus – the king condemned for eternity to roll a rock up hill only to have it always roll back as he neared the summit. And this is why rocks, geology, and landscapes become the canvas for this story.
But the myth clearly also inspired building the film into multiple chapters – each one a celluloid boulder that doesn’t quite make it to the end of the story, before the next takes over.
This ends up being an ingenious format to convey the multitude of possibilities that the creative process necessarily explores.
In keeping with this self-awareness, the process of making the film even becomes part of the film too. Sound and camera checks slowly bring the unwilling filmmaker in front of the lens. She is at the delightful mercy of a project that has taken on a life of its own, blurring distinctions between the narrator, the subject and the object.
“One day I became a rock,” muses Sophie the filmmaker – and that’s when she sees the landscape again.
J’ai perdu de vue le paysage / I lost sight of the landscape plays November 24, 28, and 30 as part of the RIDM which continues until November 30. Tickets and info on films can be found HERE
