Artium Museoa, Museum of Contemporary Art of the Basque Country presents the film Un film dramatique by Éric Baudelaire as part of its Z Gallery programme (Z Gallery, until 23 January 2022). The film stems from the collective work of a group of students from a school in the suburbs of Paris with whom Baudelaire worked over a period of four years. The young people in the film reflect on their lives and discuss politics, fear, identity, cooperation and belonging, while discovering the language of film as their lives evolve towards maturity. The Z Gallery programme is curated by Garbiñe Ortega and aims to showcase works by artists making the leap into filmmaking and filmmakers exploring the exhibition format. Artium Museum has produced a publication with a text by Patrick Holzapfel.

Un film dramatique is the result of a four-year work process by Éric Baudelaire with a group of 25 students from the Dora Maar school in Saint-Denis, Paris. The film therefore captures the moments when this group of teenagers of both sexes begin to become more conscious of their surroundings, begin to understand their position in society and adopt critical and political stances as they move towards maturity. As Patrick Holzapfel therefore indicates in his text: “more importantly, it is not a film about the children, it is a film by the children. Or, to put it more bluntly: it is a way of giving voice to those that are not used to be allowed to speak up”. The students discover the possibilities that filmmaking offers during this process: the camera as a diary, as a friend, as something to dream with through fiction, as a toy or as a political instrument.

What are we doing together? It is a recurring question for the students in the film class at Dora Maar High School, as well as for Eric Baudelaire (Salt Lake City, USA, 1973), who worked with them for four years. Answering this political question –which involves representations of power, social violence and identity– led them to search for a cinematic form that would do justice not only to the uniqueness of each student, but also to the essence of their group.

What are we doing together if not a documentary or fiction? A dramatic film, perhaps, in which time works upon the bodies and discourse of the students, and in which we discover the possibility of each person speaking on their own behalf by filming for others and becoming co-authors of the film and subjects of their own lives.

Eric Baudelaire is an artist and filmmaker. His recent feature films include Also Known As Jihadi (2017), Letters to Max (2014), The Ugly One (2013) and The Anabasis of May and Fusako Shigenobu, Masao Adachi and 27 Years Without Images (2011), all of which have been widely screened at film festivals such as Locarno, Toronto, New York, Marseille and Rotterdam.

Curator: Garbiñe Ortega