Artist Brings Cannes Alive on Ink

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Parent Category: Film Festivals

Category: Features

Published on Sunday, 15 December 2013 10:32

Written by Marian Masone

In addition to the more than 80 feature films (a very loose count) in the various sections –Compétition, Un Certain Regard, Quinzaine des Réalisateurs, Semaine de la Critique, and those films that, for various reasons, show up out of competition, there’s a world of media and images at the Festival de Cannes. From press kit photos to the paparazzi pix and shots from the red carpet, there’s an official photograph overload. But go to the festival’s website and look for a section titled Hors-champ and you will find, among a selection of shots of festival preparation – the streets of Cannes before opening night, and some great candid photos taken by M. Gilles Jacob - a wonderful series of line drawings (“trait continu”) signed by the artist Dgé Paris (Geraldine Goldenstern Demey), who has drawn a veritable picture-book story of off-camera moments in and around the festival. After the festival ended, we met in Paris to talk about her style, her art, and how she came to tell the “off-camera” story of the festival.

She’s a self-taught artist whose work also includes sculptural pieces. And even before Cannes, she was showing her work in the Muriel Guépin Gallery in Brooklyn’s Cobble Hill neighborhood.  (The gallery has since relocated to Manhattan) Now that Brooklyn is the hippest place in the universe, one could say she was well ahead of the trend! She has also worked in the theater – one of her first jobs in France was as an assistant for a stage director. It was there (trying to figure out a way to present weekly reports) that she began to hone her sketching style. She found that theater is linked to cinema, especially in the way the teams work: very intense work, very focused – working for concentrated period of time with a new family, of sorts.

And it is in cinema where she does much of her work now – mostly as a script consultant, although she works for the Festival de Cannes for a few months a year. And so it was that she “drew” the festival – on her lunch hour, in the evenings. While we call her work line drawings, she has a spontaneous style that is almost like poetry: She does not look at her paper or her pen, but at the scene before her, that she wants to describe. And since she is also a writer (she has written poems and short stories), she creates poetic descriptions for each drawing. Although each illustration is accompanied by text, the pictures by themselves form a sort of narrative of their own. These fabulous festival drawings – of a press conference, of a security guard, of an old section of Cannes, away from the glitz of the Croisette – also create a diary; one drawing for each day of the festival.

Of course, she does more than these beautiful pen and ink drawings, some of which adorn this posting. To see more of her black and white sketches, as well as color drawings and sculptures,  go to her Facebook wall (Dgé Paris), or click on these links:

http://diablosantiag.free.fr/encres

http://diablosantiag.free.fr/sculptures

http://diablosantiag.free.fr/aumuseelorsait

Geraldine loves cinema. She loves to draw. And she loves to write. And in a corner of a website, she is able to combine all of her passions – and take us out of the frantic pace of the festival in the process.

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