Oregon Documentary Film Festival 2019 – Boris: A Portrait of an Artist as an Old Man
A rare invitation into Boris Vansier’s attic reveals a seventy year archive of paintings, the life’s work of a noted artist who’s as prolific as he is charming.
Interview with Writer/Producer Natalie Vansier
Congratulations! Why did you make your film?
My father, Daryl Vansier, the executive producer of the film, and his twin brother Gerald, were born in Montreal but their father, Boris Vansier, moved back to Switzerland alone when they were just five years old. Seeing as they only spent time with him on a few occasions after that separation, my encounters with my grandfather were few. In 2014, I had a new boyfriend and I joined him for Christmas with his family in Geneva. On that trip, we visited Boris in the neighbouring mountain town of Saint Cergue and discovered that my boyfriend’s family home was directly up the hill from where Boris had been raised and where my father and uncle had come to play on Lake Geneva one summer as kids. Tickled by this coincidence and our rich reunion, my father visited Boris later that year and found himself moved by Boris’ incredible body of work and his persistent work ethic - Boris was painting nearly every day for over sixty years. His immense archive of paintings was crowded in storage spaces where it had been neglected for many years after the passing of his former art dealers. This was aggravated by Boris’ looming debt. My best friend/business partner, Matus Racek, and I were producing a contemporary art vlog at Arsenal Contemporary so my father had the idea that we could produce a promotional video on Boris similar to the interviews I was conducting with these other artists. We didn’t realize that this would eventually result in a film interesting in its own right, much more than a sales pitch.
Imagine I’m a member of the audience. Why should I watch this film?
Many – if not all – people are moved by artistic experience in some way, but so many of us don’t know how to articulate those feelings. I studied Fine Arts and then did a Masters in Art History so I had learned the art world “lingo” but didn’t relate to it as it felt more like jargon than truth. In fact, the more I tapped into the trends and rhetoric of the art market, the more disillusioned I became with art and my ambitions in that industry. After a couple of years working in prominent galleries, I quit the visual arts altogether. Paradoxically, this film about art was the perfect antidote to the cynicism I had developed. Boris’ take on being an artist is so human, immediate and refreshing because it speaks to almost everyone and not just the limited public of academic and artistic institutions. People laugh when they watch the film and later tell me lines that stood out to them. These are always taken from different moments in the film which I believe shows its range for audiences.
How do personal and universal themes work in your film?
Boris is speaking about being an artist in the subjective and objective sense simultaneously. He begins by destigmatizing all the cliches that surround the word “artist” then he subverts our ideas of what “good art” is supposed to signify. Discussing his own work, he can be quite transparent but then he will just as quickly switch into a provocative discussion about “Art” in general that is also so honest, its ‘sting’ feels nearly universal. I don’t think this oscillation is an accident. Art is necessarily both a private experience and a shared one.
How have the script and film evolved over the course of their development?
As I mentioned earlier, this film began as an artist profile and evolved into its own entity. I am still unsure of how to categorize it. It became about what Boris was Boris wanted to discuss. We do not delve into many details of Boris’ personal history aside from when it involves his biography as an artist. That is why the film is called “Boris: Portrait of an Artist as an Old Man” (from Joyce’s “Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man”) because for Boris, his story as a human being is inseparable from his story as an artist. In this way, the doc is a bit different from traditional cultural biographies and speaks to anyone who has ever been drawn to art, painting or otherwise. When I was preparing my interview questions in preproduction, I had hoped the film would provide commentary on many issues I saw in the art world but I didn't realize how clear Boris' insights would be on this nor how strongly they would impact people who didn't have as much direct experience with art.
What type of feedback have you received so far?
Depends. From our audiences, I have been stunned. At our premiere at AmDocs 2018, there had been a few films before ours and the audience had been customarily quiet. During our film, which came last, the audience became very vocal: laughing, responding, or murmuring agreement. I had not expected that level of interactivity from the audience. It continued during the Q&A – the theatre was only half full but every person in the audience asked us a question or made a comment about Boris, or raised their own experience as an artist or a relative of one. From the film industry, on the other hand, professionals generally like it but are confused where it fits in terms of genre, distribution path etc. So far we have been picked up by smaller, independent festivals that tend to be more risk-taking in their selection in the sense that they aren’t waiting to first to see which films the industry is backing.
Has the feedback surprised or challenged your point of view?
Some things people have said caused me to pause but a lot of the feedback I received resonated with reflections I had had during the three-year production process. It was good to know people were responding to elements I had hoped would be present before we started filming and also ones that had later moved me when watching Matus Racek’s first cuts of the film. Again, it shows that something personal can connect just as strongly with people encountering it for the first time - that’s inspiring.
What are you looking to achieve by having your film more visible on www.wearemovingstories.com?
I think we have a beautiful story to tell since we feel such a warm response from the small audiences that have seen it so far. It is so nice to encounter curiosity about what went into making the film, where so much time, energy and resources have been privately devoted, in the hopes that someday, it will be seen. Moving Stories renders visible the private personal investments made by the filmmaker into their story.
Who do you need to come on board (producers, sales agents, buyers, distributors, film festival directors, journalists) to amplify this film’s message?
We are looking for people who would like to help guide the distribution process and down the line, international sales agents. However at this time, our priority is to accelerate and broaden this film’s reach in film festivals worldwide. I have applied to many festivals, but know that a direct connection with festival directors is irreplaceable so that’s who I’d like to meet first.
What type of impact and/or reception would you like this film to have?
I would like this film’s impact to be felt as windows being opened on the stuffy room that is the white cube/contemporary art exhibition space and the impenetrable curatorial text that often accompanies it. I am not anti-intellectual by any means nor a relativist. But I look forward to a time that art’s universality translates into artists and institutions that inspire broader publics to truly engage. Which also means that I would love for more people to become interested in artists that are not usually favoured by today’s art professionals, for various reasons, such as my grandfather. And best case scenario, projects like this will hopefully open the minds of the people pulling the strings in the art world to have a more authentic and less calculating approach to their subject matter.
What’s a key question that will help spark a debate or begin a conversation about this film?
Who and what is an artist? How can we shed the pretences surrounding art and artists to connect to the immediate joys of the artistic experience?
Would you like to add anything else?
Another significant turning point for the film was when we were a month away from our premiere and hadn’t settled on the music in the film. Our original soundtrack merged seamlessly with the edited film but we didn’t have the rights to the music. Another composer we hired didn’t work out. A crazy coincidence happened when my father was discussing the situation with a friend’s son who was visiting him in Costa Rica and he mentioned that some of the music we had to replace belonged to Nina Simone, who comes up in the film. The friend’s son said that his step-father was Al Schackman, Nina Simone’s guitarist and closest friend for forty years. We connected with him in Martha’s Vineyard and he not only loved the film, but expressed that he "understood" it and produced us a score inspired by our first soundtrack but made from scratch. I can not express how grateful we were and are for this incredible assembly of melodies and how apt is was that two artists from the same generation were indirectly collaborating from overseas (Boris/Al).
What other projects are the key creatives developing or working on now?
Matus Racek, who shot and edited the film, has an ongoing online VHS video archive called 5443 (vimeo.com/5443mtl). He is constantly producing and releasing shorts ranging from artistic to comedic and recently published an Augmented Reality video-book that looks back on this decade long project. We recently returned to Boris’ studio to do a comprehensive archive of his paintings with a professional photographer to respond to the renewed interest in his work since the film. Our company RAVAN Productions then filmed a five-part video series on equestrian athlete, Chris Sorensen, in the Netherlands, which is about to be released online. I am currently writing a fictional comedy series called Polly that is in development in which I would act in the lead role of Polly, a woman who lives with her four husbands in suburbia.
Interview: February 2019
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Boris: A Portrait of an Artist as an Old Man
A rare invitation into Boris Vansier’s attic reveals a seventy year archive of paintings, the life’s work of a noted artist who’s as prolific as he is charming.
Length: 28:08
Director: Matus Racek
Producer: Daryl & Natalie Vansier
Writer: Natalie Vansier
About the writer, director and producer:
MATUS RACEK is a director, cinematographer and photographer in Montreal, originally hailing from Slovakia. His work ranges from analog shorts, comedic commercials to documentaries.
NATALIE VANSIER is an actress, producer, screenwriter and interviewer in Montreal, working on film and television sets since the age of ten years old.
Key cast: Boris Vansier (Film Subject)
Looking for: film festival directors, distributors, sales agents, buyers
Facebook: Boris the Documentary
Twitter: @nat_vansier
Instagram: @ravanproductions
Website: boristhedocumentary.com
Other: IMDB
Made in association with: Ravan Productions
Funders: Self-funded
Where can I watch it next and in the coming month? Oregon Documentary Film Festival - March 23, 2018