Faction en Film. (Dutch/Flemish)

Faction and film. (English)

On November 1, 2004 a symposium entitled The Artist's Biography on Film was held at the Film Museum in Amsterdam. The guests included the American historian Robert A. Rosenstone, author of Visions of the Past: The Challenge of Film to our Idea of History (1995), and the British cineast Peter Webber, who made the feature film Girl with a Pearl Earring (2003). While Webber talked about the film and his motives for taking the girl in Vermeer's painting as his departure point for a fictitious story about the painter, Rosenstone discussed the film Frida (2002 Julie Taymor), a so-called biopic, or biographical feature film. The various approaches to the reconstruction or fictionalization of an artist's life provided interesting material for comparison. Biopics usually come in for a good deal of criticism, mainly because of the claim that they are presenting 'the truth'. Documentaries, in which people who knew the person are interviewed and the actual protagonist is often heard, are an objective representation of reality. The biopic, like the historical novel, is commonly labelled 'faction' -a combination of fact and fiction- in which historical facts are used as a framework for a romantic or dramatic story. The artist's biopic is largely the same as an ordinary biopic, except for the fact that the works of art and the working methods of the artist also play a role. Individuals selected for a biopic are usually well known for their deeds, while artists -despite their status within their profession- are usually chosen primarily because of the stereotype they represent. In many cases, their art is made subservient to the tragic life they have led. Of course, this will differ from one film to the other, depending on the intention of the filmmaker and the contribution of the producer. In Frida, not only is the work used to illustrate both events and Kahlo's frame of mind at any given moment, it almost literally comes to life. Some self-portraits of the artist appear to be a kind of three-dimensional decor, and in other scenes the actress poses as the self-portrait, and then suddenly begins to move. The angle which Webber chose for Girl with a Pearl Earring was the erotic obsession of an older man for a young girl. At the same time, he used the film as a means of capturing the form language of Vermeer. Which of these two films results in the most reliable image? Frida allows us to experience with considerable intensity the life and work of Frida Kahlo, but we learn very little about her working methods. Girl with a Pearl Earring gives the viewer a better understanding of Vermeer and provides insight into seventeenth-century studio practice, but does not tell us a great deal about what kind of man he was. Is a documentary capable of evoking a more reliable image of an artist? Perhaps. But does it not make more sense to replace the question about factual accuracy by the question of credibility and conceptualization? In the future, art historians will be increasingly confronted with film material dealing with artists: from private films to filmed interviews, documentaries, historic films and biopics. The importance of these visual sources for art historical research can no longer be underestimated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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