Pauline Curnier-Jardin

Fat to Ashes

Transcendence and hedonism are two of the inner contradictions we experience in new conceptual constellations in a work dedicated to collective rituals in Europe’s public spaces.

Adoration

The island of Giudecca, south of the historic center of Venice, is the home of the Convent of the Convertite, which for about 200 years has been a women’s jail for the imprisonment and rehabilitation of condemned prisoners. Even before that, the building was a convent where prostitutes and women considered immoral were locked up against their will. Nevertheless, behind those walls, and in particular in the parlor, there is another story, and according to this story women performed for high society offering shows of transvestism, sometimes even blasphemous.

Fireflies

The Italian countryside was once full of fireflies, but now the flickering of far-off headlights pepper the fields as johns go hunting for a one-night mate. In the heat of the night, the reflective glow of other bioluminescent bodies returns the magic of twinkling lights to the darkness.

Bled Out

Inspired by Jean Genet's 1950 homoerotic "Un Chant D'Amour", this short film interrogates patriarchal credo through the lens of its unseen bodies. Shiny young male bodies are replaced with post-menopausal women, who celebrate their erotic power after shedding the patriarchal construct which places them ‘of the market'(as author Virginie Despentes would say).

Explosion Ma Baby

It’s August. Feel the suffocating heat of the sun penetrating your skin. All around you, an abundance of flesh is spinning. Thousands of men offer up the naked bodies of baby boys to the angelic icon of San Sebastian. Screams, colours, chants and explosions. Money-garlands. Imagine no women except for me. Wait, yes, behind us women are following with devotion, all dressed up in well pressed clothes and their stocking feet. Now, come back here. Imagine how badly I fell in love with this. I desperately want to be part of it. To be there. I wanted to belong. But I know I can’t. And so, I try to capture it on film. I go there and film it every year, over and over, again and again. One day I will tell the story of a poor and sterile man who wants to replace San Sebastian. But more summers will have to pass before our hero appears.

Explosion Ma Baby

It’s August. Feel the suffocating heat of the sun penetrating your skin. All around you, an abundance of flesh is spinning. Thousands of men offer up the naked bodies of baby boys to the angelic icon of San Sebastian. Screams, colours, chants and explosions. Money-garlands. Imagine no women except for me. Wait, yes, behind us women are following with devotion, all dressed up in well pressed clothes and their stocking feet. Now, come back here. Imagine how badly I fell in love with this. I desperately want to be part of it. To be there. I wanted to belong. But I know I can’t. And so, I try to capture it on film. I go there and film it every year, over and over, again and again. One day I will tell the story of a poor and sterile man who wants to replace San Sebastian. But more summers will have to pass before our hero appears.

Grotta profunda, les humeurs du gouffre

Short film release