Sophie Fiennes’ documentary immerses us in the monumental wasteland being created by German painter and sculptor Anselm Kiefer – and shows us the artist at work. “Ravishingly hypnotic.” — Sight & Sound
A deeply serious meditation on artistic practice and expression: a discourse in which the artist as creator is respectfully restored to the very centre of the process.
Screened as part of NZIFF 2011
Over Your Cities Grass Will Grow 2010
With a hushed, steady tread Sophie Fiennes draws us into the monumental wasteland being created by German painter and sculptor Anselm Kiefer in the grounds of an abandoned silk factory at Barjac, in the south of France, and shows us the artist at work. Kiefer’s work evokes 20th-century Europe as a ruined ancient civilisation, and Fiennes immerses us in his world simply and to haunting effect with stately camera movement and a minimal score by Jörg Widmann and György Ligeti. — BG
“A ravishingly hypnotic record of the work of landscape artist Anselm Kiefer, who carves haunted spaces out of earth, air, fire and water and fills them with troubling and enigmatic objects: new relics planted carefully into new ruins. Addressing, almost wordlessly, the interdependence of work and practice, Fiennes finally appropriates Kiefer’s conceptual wonderland to ponder the relationships between film, art and truth. Masterfully done.” — Lisa Mullen, Sight & Sound