Guillaume Thomas

Life damages the living - Film - 59min - 2021

presented as part of the exhibition Panorama 23

Film


Valerie von Sobel, 80, draped in Haute Couture and mystery. Locked up in California mountains during a global pandemic, a prodigal son tries to portray his spiritual mother.

Guillaume Thomas


As a child, Guillaume THOMAS wanted to be a magician. They told him "magic does not exist," so he armed himself with a still and move camera to prove the vitality of fairies. His research took him on the trail of those entities which he describes as "characters," those freedom-loving beings that express themselves in their multiplicity, their infinite self-recomposition. Trained in photography and video at the École Nationale Supérieure des Arts décoratifs in Paris, as well as at the School of Visual Arts in New York, Thomas made his first film, Life Damages the Living, at Le Fresnoy - Studio national in 2021. With the visual and sound installation Ad Astra, he turns to the stars: how to go from fingerprint to starprint?
His second documentary Pinned into a dress, codirected with Gianluca Matarrese, opens the 37th Venice International Film Critics' Week 2022.

Production


Le Fresnoy - Studio national des arts contemporains, Tourcoing

Credits


› Interprétation : Valerie Von Sobel, Guillaume Thomas
› Image : Guillaume Thomas
› Montage image : Melisa Liebenthal
› Son : Guillaume Thomas
› Montage son : Benjamin Poilane
› Mixage : Yannick Delmaire
› Accompagnement artistique : Ben Russell