To understand how local artists shape matter to extract their vision of the world, you have to meet them. Highlighted is a series of portraits which appears every last Saturday of the month. Forays into the universe of creators who work on their works in unusual ways, set back from current cultural events.
After shooting sequences for his latest film, The underground blackness of the roots, Charles-André Coderre left it to chance… and to the earth. He buried the film to let it degrade with the elements, sublimating his subjects even in abstraction, giving rise to new hybrid spaces where cinema and the visual arts intersect.
His short film premiered last month at the International Festival of Films on Art, using three 16mm projectors, following its world premiere at the prestigious Rotterdam festival in January. This is one of the reasons why The duty wanted to meet him. Since leaving the Jerusalem in my Heart project in 2019, the artist has multiplied experimental films, installations and performances.
He also co-founded the film performance festival and experimental music OK LÀ, which has generated exponential enthusiasm since its very first version, which was organized on the roof of the Ethel parking lot, in Verdun, five years ago. It is precisely in this borough, where he lives and which inspires him, that we met him: at Quai 5160, on the bank, where he is shooting his next film.
Rhythm and colors
Accompanied by his Bolex, a brand of camera loved by Jonas Mekas, Maya Deren and Stan Brakhage, to name just a few, Charles-André Coderre says he “listens” to everything around him. When filming, he spontaneously films his environment. “The Bolex allows me to do multiple exposures and all sorts of image manipulation right on camera. I want to incorporate the idea of performance into filming, development and screening. »
For my last film, we shot outside, then I buried a lot of material. The earth created colors and attacked areas of the emulsion. […] In the end, it was very abstract. It is a formal work of rhythms and colors, close to visual art.
The artist approaches this idea by paying particular attention to “the life of objects”, to nature. “For my last film, we shot outside, then I buried a lot of material. The earth created colors and attacked areas of the film emulsion. I also added stuff, like icing sugar, to speed up the rotting process. There were always a lot of unforeseen events. In the end, it was very abstract. It is a formal work of rhythms and colors, close to visual art. »
However, its referents remain “deeply cinematographic”, he continues. The latter was, among other things, inspired by the Quebecer Louise Bourque, “who buried certain films for years before recovering them”. It was even when he obtained his bachelor’s degree in cinema at the University of Montreal that he began to take an interest in “practices of alteration” of the image. “I discovered Bill Morrison there, the American filmmaker who made Decasia (2002), where archival nitrate footage decomposes. The result is magnificent. »
Charles-André Coderre also enjoys exploring new state-of-the-art processes. For his performance Chemical fractures, which was notably presented at Mutek and in Rotterdam, it still projected live on film, “but a sensor recorded the light pulse of the screen. The sensor then sent a signal to the modular synthesizer of musician Mathieu Arsenault, to dictate the rhythm of the music that accompanied the images”.
“Very Montreal” influences
Although he has been recognized and respected in his milieu for several years now, he was not always intended for experimental cinema. It was by meeting artists such as Karl Lemieux and Daïchi Saïto, the founder of the influential Double Negative collective, that the one who grew up in the small village of Saint-Jacques, in Lanaudière, got hooked.
“This is the stage underground Montrealer who made me trip over it. I was Karl Lemieux’s assistant when he took over the screenings for Godspeed You! Black Emperor. It was a super important training, ”says the filmmaker. According to him, there is also a “particular relationship, very Montreal, between experimental cinema and music. All that crystallized before me, with Double Negative, Godspeed and Constellation Records”.
He thus co-founded the OK LÀ festival with Michaël Bardier — president of Heavy Trip, the record company behind Marie Davidson and Helena Deland — to pursue “this passion for expanded cinema”, inspired by other one-off events that took place at the Hotel2Tango studio. , or at the late The Pines studio in Griffintown, which was run by David Bryant of GYBE!.
Attract crowds
After our interview, we walk along the water’s edge. A jogger stops and recognizes the filmmaker: “Charles André! he exclaims. The two men had gotten to know each other because the sportsman had one day apostrophized the artist, intrigued by his Bolex.
The latter was telling, a few minutes earlier, how much his performances aroused encounters and intimate relationships with his audience. “People want to chat after the screenings, when the context is more DIY. They are interested in the sound of the projector, in everything that happens. »
It should not be believed, he says, that experimental cinema cannot attract crowds. “At OK LÀ, 250 to 300 people can come per evening, and all the tickets sell out very quickly. As soon as there are musical performances, it attracts more people. With Jerusalem in my Heart, we did a lot of tours in Europe. There is a whole circuit for these works. And Chemical fractures, I presented it five or six times in the regions of Quebec. It’s great for this kind of show. »
Charles-André Coderre even knows how to combine his niche practice with other more mainstream projects. He notably co-directed a feature film (deserts, 2016), and is currently working on another, as part of a mentorship program with Netflix and Québec Cinéma. With the doctorate in research-creation that he is preparing at the University of Montreal and his filming at the water’s edge, he will not have time to get bored.