Currently watching: Over Your Cities Grass Will Grow (2010) dir Sophie Fiennes.
“OVER YOUR CITIES GRASS WILL GROW 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 Buchen, Germany for La Ribaute, a derelict silk factory near Barjac. From 2000 he began constructing a series of elaborate installations there. Like a strange, sprawling village, La Ribaute extends over 35 hectares and is composed of old industrial buildings and working studios that link to a network of underground tunnels dug out by Kiefer, which run underneath pavilions built to house paintings and installations. An underground pool at the cul-de-sac of a tubular iron tunnel is embedded within a crypt which backs onto to a 20 m tiered concrete amphitheatre. There are caves and woods, an open landscape of concrete towers – assembled like so many card houses – and secluded, private spaces. Traversing this landscape, the film immerses the audience in the total world and creative process of one of today’s most significant and inventive 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 Ribaute.
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. Over Your Cities Grass Will Grow gives privileged access to Kiefer’s last days at La Ribotte prior to his move to Paris, where he now lives and works.”
Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6zf63U1Rk0w
My friend bought my this film for my birthday after I mentioned it had come up through my preliminary rubbish research it but wasn’t quite sure if it was that relevant. Having seen a lot of Kiefer’s work mainly in Berlin I knew there was a link to remains and ruins but not sure any of his individual works would fit my rubbish categories. The aesthetic of his work is rubbish-y: broken glass, dirt and ash, acid-ruined lead, but the raw industrial materials he uses are not rubbish to begin. The scenes he depicts are also those of ruins, remains and wastelands so there is certainly a link but not quite my criteria that the materials used a rubbish to start with.
I finally got round to watching the film yesterday which is the product of Fiennes’ 2 year film study of Kiefer in his Barjac studio complex (in the South of France) after he decided to leave for the Périphérique of Paris. The film is comprised of many slow pan shots of the major building-installation project La Ribaute in Kiefer’s Barjac complex, without narration, cut to shots of him working in his massive studio with his assistants, and with him directing cranes to construct the concrete structures featured on the cover, plus an interview in the Barjac library. The interview reveals a little about how he made the huge studio complex from wasteland (taking a bulldozer through the wasteland marking up where buildings were to be in chalk) and also how he views his work as he pulls bits of theory from astrophysics and religion (The Bible is a major influence).
It’s not clear when Kiefer decided to start making the massive installation-structure of tunnels and various buildings that each house a piece of his work – whether it was before or after he decided to move studios – but it is clear he was keen to create a legacy of his time there. He moved 110 container trucks of his work and equipment to his new studio the outskirts of Paris and left behind several pieces in the complex. Each work is installed as he intends them to be viewed as the film beautifully illustrates, mixing panning and tracking techniques to give the viewer a 3D sense of the sculptural configurations.
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