Director Lech Kowalski is a cult figure in underground cinema. Renowned for his controversial award-winning documentaries a journalist once called him “A warrior battling with a camera to redefine the art of documentary.” Born in London to Polish immigrants who fled Russian concentration camps, Kowalski grew up in nomadic displacement in the United States. He began his career in the 70’s in New York. His impressive array of documentaries has garnered critical praise around the world – best film for East of Paradise at Venice film festival in 2005, the Special Jury Award for On Hitler’s Highway at the 2002 Amsterdam International Documentary Film Festival, the Golden Gate Award for Rock Soup at the 1992 San Francisco International Film Festival. His seminal 1981 film DOA (first prize in Paris Music Film Festival) is a punk escapade that follows the Sex Pistols tour of the USA.

He created innovative film projects on the Internet – in 2008 Kowalski posted new “film-chapters” every week for one year on CameraWar.tv. Film historian Nicole Brenez awarded CameraWar.tv a top ten film of the 21^st century. In 2012, Cuts was made for the Palais de Tokyo, the largest contemporary museum in Europe. 

East of Paradise is on the list of 15 best documentaries made since the year 2,000 by Italian film critics.  His two most recent films dealt with environmental issues – Holy Field Holy War was awarded three prizes in FID Marseille and release theatrically in many countries and the popular Drill Baby Drill about Chevron fracking operations in Poland was made for Arte and RTS television and continues to play all over the world.

last update 27th March, 2017

Lives and works in France in Marseille and Burkina Faso. Trained in painting at the National School of Fine Arts in Paris, she has also been licensed to film and audiovisual Faculty of the University Paris III Sorbonne Nouvelle. Winner of the prize for painting the town of Vitry-sur-Seine in 1987 and the Foundation of Fine Arts in 1988, various private and public collections – including the City of Paris and the National Plastic Arts Centre – were the acquisition of her works. Frédérique Lagny undertakes its work ten years ago in Burkina Faso in West Africa where it is developing a project composed of different photo essays, videos and sounds that reflect the successive shifts in hers views. Her project turned to the human figure, identifiable in some ways to a critical form of anthropology defined as tool – in the sense that Mongo Beti heard – attempting to develop, in practice as in its dissemination, a political intention.

last update 28th March, 2017

Pascale Cassagnau holds a PhD in Art History and Criticism and is responsible for the audiovisual and new media collection at the CNAP (Centre national des arts plastiques, Paris). She writes extensively for Art Press and is the author of texts on artists such as Chris Burden, James Coleman, John Baldessari, Pierre Huyghe, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster and Matthieu Laurette, among others. She is mainly interested in the study of new film practices and their cross-over with contemporary art. Her essay “Future Amnesia, Enquêtes sur un troisième cinéma” (Ed. Isthmus, 2006) investigates new filmic forms, existing between fiction and documentary. “Un pays supplémentaire” (Ed. Ecole nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Paris, 2010) focuses on contemporary creation in the media architecture. Her book, “‘Apichatpong Weerasethakul,’ Une théorie des objets personnels” was released as an e-book in 2016. Her essay “Diagramme Monteiro, on Joao Cesar Monterio, was written in collaboration with Hughes Decointet and published in Editions de L’Oeil in 2017. Her essays “La répétition générale,” — a work on the processes of creation and research in the fields of cinema, contemporary art — and “Dispositifs-jeux” — on Jean Frapat, inventor of television devices — are currently in progress.

Last update 9th March 2017