Simon Backès

Tells the story of the wonderful and long-lasting friendship between Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg and William Burroughs that gave birth to the Beat Generation movement.

Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton were two incredibly talented artists who enjoyed enormous worldwide success at a very young age. The two giants of the golden age of silent cinema were perceived to be constantly competing with each other for the crown of the king of laughter.

The rise and fall story of a troubling and fragile actor who would eventually be recognized for his talent. The case of Mickey Rourke is a real turning point in the way men have portrayed themselves in American cinema.

This is a story of a seemingly quiet and unobtrusive man, author of a colossal and partly unfinished literary work. We will try to trace back to the origins of his inspiration so as to understand why his work met and still meets with so much success. How did JRR Tolkien manage, through the power of words alone, to so widely instill wisps of magic in the midst of a particularly disenchanted 20th century?

Esmeray : artist, transsexual, Kurd, feminist, currently lives in Turkey. First, we filmed her as she walked the streets of Istanbul at night – her territory. Then, we asked her, for a short while, to slip back into the skin, or at least the costume, of the man she stopped being 20 years ago. In this guise, she followed the same routes. The two pictures are shown simultaneously. The film becomes like an experiment in self-shadowing. Split screen as an exploration of split personality ?

« Traces, women's imprints » is a film that ventures to the discovery of three grandmothers kassenas (Burkina Faso,) their granddaughter, and the exclusively feminine art of this region's mural paintings. Between these women's portraits and a traditional art form, « Traces » is a painting on paintings that reflects upon transmission, education and memory in the context of a world in mutation.

A woman of Turkish ascent, following ancient Anatolian healing rites, dreams her way through fragments of memory, both personal and collective. Guided by a mythological character, Kheiron the Centaur, she travels freely between the ruins of an ancient Roman hospital and the streets of a mountain village, high above the river Euphrates. Time and space become dislocated, opening up passages between worlds. An inner experience translated into a film poem, KAZARKEN explores memory as a place of struggle against oblivion and the violence of hidden history.

Where does one draw the line between 'art' and 'theft'? Art and artist? A criminal and aesthetic investigation into the creation of incognito artist Pavel Novak, virtuosi counterfeiter wanted by the FBI for his 1978 "Stolen Art" exhibition in New York, which caused international stupefaction… some pieces proved to be stolen originals. Simon Backès takes us on a trek across New York, introducing us to specialists who unveil and question our relation to art- a matter of cultural legacy, but also, quite simply, merchandise. Does beauty exist without copyright?

Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton were two incredibly talented artists who enjoyed enormous worldwide success at a very young age. The two giants of the golden age of silent cinema were perceived to be constantly competing with each other for the crown of the king of laughter.

Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton were two incredibly talented artists who enjoyed enormous worldwide success at a very young age. The two giants of the golden age of silent cinema were perceived to be constantly competing with each other for the crown of the king of laughter.