Bouquets 1-10

“Bouquets 1-10” consists of ten one-minute films covering a variety of subjects. The procedure entails using the film strip as a canvas with the freedom to film frames on any part of the strip in any order, running the film through the camera as many times as needed. Each bouquet of flowers is also a bouquet of frames, mingling the plants to be found in a given place with activities that happen to be there at the time. Bouquet 1: The Mount Ventoux, from top to bottom over a distance of twenty miles: yellow poppies and mountain flowers mix with people eating their lunch, scrambling or cycling up the slopes leading to a scale of colourful candies on the summit. Bouquet 2: The village of Brantes and a school cycling party on the borders of the Vaucluse and Deome departments. Bouquet 3 : A Sunday afternoon on the way to, and in, the village of Roquevaire (Var Department) on the banks of the Huveaune River. Bouquet 4: On the sands of Beauduc (Camargue, near the national park area) people have built a small village out of a bric-a-brac. One of the cabins has a local Provencal scene painted on its fences: a Camargue bull is depicted in its bullring with windmill, cypress tree and spectator (or bull fighter). The sea air is rapidly peeling off the paint. The local authorities are threatening to remove all the homes. Bouquet 5: A slope on the main Marsaille to Paris railway line by the organic food cooperative just outside the ramparts of Avignon. Bouquet 6: Sunset in la Vesse, a tiny fishing harbour on a rocky inlet near Marseille. Bouquet 7: A famous round medieval wash house built on an equally famous spring, (the Fosse Dionne, in the medieval town of Tonnerre) mingled with wild flowers from the abandoned terraces, cultivated plants in the surrounding park leading up to the church on the hill, flowers in hanging pots, their reflections and others growing in or around the water’s edges. Bouquet 8: The beach at Beauduc with people boating, sailboarding or fishing for shellfish. Bouquet 9: A field of buttercups onthe way to Signes (Var) with families on a Sunday outing, and some of the rubbish they leave behind. Bouquet 10: The mountain slopes and leisure activities surounding the artificial lake of Serre-Poncon (Hautes-Alpes) as a flock of sheep roam the camping site and a launch visits the church on an island, the only flooded village item remaining above water level.