Still Life: Filming Movement and Letting the Absurd In
In summer 2020, I worked on Still Life as cinematographer, alongside director Anne-Marie Sylvestre and performers Claude Breton-Potvin and Chantal Dupuis. It’s a short film where movement, the presence of bodies and a sense of displacement become ways of storytelling. The project was later presented at Rendez-vous Québec Cinéma in 2021.
What I love about this kind of creation is the freedom to look differently at the simplest things. A couch, two women, an apparently ordinary situation: shifting rhythm and gestures is enough to open everyday life onto a funny, strange world. The camera can accompany that transformation without needing to explain everything.
My contribution was in cinematography. With Anne-Marie, we sought a visual presence serving Claude and Chantal’s proposal: giving space to movement, relationships between bodies and what happens within the frame. When performance carries so much of the story, filming becomes an act of listening. Precision matters, but so does the room we leave for performers.
I have very fond memories of that day of filming. It was a creative collaboration whose images I already loved as we finished the project. The joy of making something together is one of the reasons I continue an independent career: entering different worlds and seeking, with each team, a way to bring them to life on screen.
Still Life holds a special place in these memories, at the meeting point of cinema and performance. Projects like this feed my perspective and remind me that an image can tell a story through a gesture, a pause or a slight shift. The short film’s presentation at Rendez-vous Québec Cinéma gave new life to that collective work.
Discover the project and its credits:https://claude-breton.com/galerie-2/galerie/
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