Xavier Baert
Xavier Baert has been making movies since 1999, mostly on silver-halide film. He is also a programmer at the Cinémathèque de la Danse and a member of the artist-run film laboratory Etna. His movies are caracterized by the image of a dreamed body, dancing, and lustful, and by the nakedness. His practice evolves from film to film, and combines different formal treatments in a never-ending quest of the sublime. Being a filmmaker with an eclectic knowledge, he claims the influence of «traditional filmmakers (Wong Kar Wai, Ferrara, De Palma) as much as experimental ones such as Soukaz, Lemaître, Almuro, whose common point would be the radicality of authorship. Xavier Baert and his danser Cyril Accorsi were recently greeted as residents at the Centre National de la Danse in order to extend their artistic collaboration.
Présence (2013)
Footage of dancer Julien Touati in dramatic lighting. (more)
Footage of dancer Julien Touati in dramatic lighting. (more)
Empreinte (2004)
This birth of the human silhouette metonymically takes us back to the origins of cinema, to Marey or Muybridge’s pre-cinema. Baért with his model wanted to re-find the dancer Loie Fuller’s aerial movements such as one can see in Fire Dance (1901). This research for ... (more)
This birth of the human silhouette metonymically takes us back to the origins of cinema, to Marey or Muybridge’s pre-cinema. Baért with his model wanted to re-find the dancer Loie Fuller’s aerial movements such as one can see in Fire Dance (1901). This research for ... (more)
Nu lacté (2002)
Othello Vilgard, Xavier Baert and Lionel Soukaz filmed a performance by Tom de Pékin. (more)
Othello Vilgard, Xavier Baert and Lionel Soukaz filmed a performance by Tom de Pékin. (more)
Bal de la Tournelle (1999)
A high angle shot of light, colours and rhythms in the darkness of a rave party. Freedom of Super 8 (main material of most of my films at this time), slow motion intensity (Hong-Kong cinema convinced me about the profoundness), a flash of a male body outline ... (more)
A high angle shot of light, colours and rhythms in the darkness of a rave party. Freedom of Super 8 (main material of most of my films at this time), slow motion intensity (Hong-Kong cinema convinced me about the profoundness), a flash of a male body outline ... (more)
Extase (2007)
Two men making love. The question of the embrace (which encompasses the caress, the look, the kiss, the penetration, the speed of movement, the expression of ecstasy…) give to the film a scenario of examples of editing (disconnection, links, rhythm, interlaced ... (more)
Two men making love. The question of the embrace (which encompasses the caress, the look, the kiss, the penetration, the speed of movement, the expression of ecstasy…) give to the film a scenario of examples of editing (disconnection, links, rhythm, interlaced ... (more)
Danseurs à la Gay Pride 2001 (2001)
If it is films which reveal ‘the choreographic fatality of cinematographic intervention’(Dominique Paini) this one henceforth very much belongs-dance gestures, in slow motion, distorted, halted, impregnate the film procession in a commentary-magnificent-by its own ... (more)
If it is films which reveal ‘the choreographic fatality of cinematographic intervention’(Dominique Paini) this one henceforth very much belongs-dance gestures, in slow motion, distorted, halted, impregnate the film procession in a commentary-magnificent-by its own ... (more)
Révélation (2001)
Found footage movie from Wong Kar-wai's In the mood for love trailer. (more)
Found footage movie from Wong Kar-wai's In the mood for love trailer. (more)
Fantôme (2002)
Xavier Baert works on the visual outline of the body. He creates cinematographic body states which according to the French filmmaker, only cinema can invent. Ghost plays on projection and light phenomenon, on the double exposure of a body on another. The narration ... (more)
Xavier Baert works on the visual outline of the body. He creates cinematographic body states which according to the French filmmaker, only cinema can invent. Ghost plays on projection and light phenomenon, on the double exposure of a body on another. The narration ... (more)