The 34th ArtFifa festival unrolls Thursday, March 10, and goes for 10 days. There are a few fashion flicks for my fashionista friends.
First, Revealing Marie Saint Pierre, an exploration of the influence of Jean-Paul Riopelle on Quebec’s fashion doyenne, has its world premiere March 12, with a second screening March 14. My post about the film by Janice Zolf is here.
The designer in a scene from Revealing Marie Saint Pierre, by Janice Zolf.
The relationship between two fashion legends is explored in Yves Saint Laurent / Karl Lagerfeld: Un guerre en dentelle. Interviews with Lagerfeld in his clipped-rapid fire French, Pierre Bergé and vintage footage tell the story of the divergent paths of the two contemporaries, and offer a window on the history of fashion from the late 1950s on. The film visits some of the material in the story of the rivalry between the two men by Alice Drake in The Beautiful Fall, with footage of Jacques de Bascher, described as the love of Lagerfeld’s life with the beauty of the devil. Saint Laurent was also besotted with de Bascher.
The Testament of Alexander McQueen focuses on the final four shows of the late British designer, who took his life in 2010. The spectacle, genius and a hint of the tortured soul is revealed in footage of the shows and interviews. Horn of Plenty – with its festival of feathers, grotesque painted red lips and fantastic hats of lampshades, bags, umbrellas, wheels – has major play as does Plato’s Atlantis, with its armadillo-esque shoes and marine-reptilian inspirations. The 2009 show was the first fashion show to be live-streamed. Talk about visionary.
From Alexander McQueen’s Horn of Plenty show in 2009.
In one interview, asked whether his show was more fashion or spectacle, McQueen replied without hesitation, “Art.”
And in another, he says, “My life would make a good film.”
Also on the fashion front, Hubert de Givenchy: A Life in Haute Couture, and Et Schiaparelli créa la mode.
But, of course, the festival of films on art goes well beyond fashion: music, painting, dance, architecture are all covered.
On my radar: films on Hieronymus Bosch, Picasso, Chagall, Frank Gehry and on Grands Ballets Canadiens dancer Vincent Warren. Among the special events on the calendar are meetings with Warren, Marie Saint Pierre and others, as well as a karaoke session after the film Renaud, on t’a dans la peau.
Click here for the schedule and more information.
