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Archive
89 min
United-States, 1977

Production : Babette Mangolte
At the request of the filmmaker, the film has no subtitles.
English, French

Arts



Synopsis


The film is an exploration of the act of taking photographs and plays with the ideas of contrast and dichotomy. The first part, filmed in the artist’s studio, shows a photo shoot with a model in the foreground receiving orders: “Look at me. Look at the camera”. The photographer’s instructions end up involving the viewer. In the second part, the camera descends into the streets of New York, near the artist’s studio in Tribeca. Mangolte presents a second dichotomy between interior and exterior, silence and sound, portrait and landscape. The third section returns to the interior, to the artist’s studio. Many photographs of the streets we have just seen are displayed on the wall, and the artist selects them. It is a back and forth between observation and feeling, a self-portrait of the photographer-cinematographer in the 1970s.

A word from Tënk


Moving from the four walls of a studio to the lively streets of downtown Manhattan in the 1970s, we are in mid-shoot, attentively watching our models, probing their expressions—we are the eyes of Babette Mangolte. “My gaze is their gaze.” Over the course of the film, we plunge into Mangolte’s day-to-day, which invites us to question our own perspectives all while exploring the power dynamics at play in the creation of a shot. The Camera: Je or La Camera: I dwells for an instant in the New York City creative universe of a particular era as it reflects on its own creation. 

 

Line Peyron
Head of Streaming Service at Tënk, France

 

 

 

Item 1 of 4

Item 1 of 4