MaximeJean-Baptiste &Sandra MuteteriHeremans
THE FIRST IMAGE SHE TOLD ME ABOUT
What does the color black represent? The filmmakers Sandra Muteteri Heremans and Maxime Jean-Baptiste started a conversation about this that gradually evolved into a performance. In it, the artists engage in a conversation about the unsaid, nondialogues, the tension between word and image.
The title of the performance nods to the beginning of Chris Marker’s film essay Sans Soleil, in which a voice talks about a shot of three children: “the first image he told me about,” an image that supposedly represented happiness. Marker first shows a black screen and then the images of three children in a green meadow. If viewers don’t see the happiness, at least they see the black, the voiceover said.
Heremans and Jean-Baptiste present a performance-as-talk about the process of making and struggling to make a new film of their own. In their work, both makers are interested in the link between past and present, the artistic, political, and aftereffects of history on the present.
This performance is made with the support of Institut Français.