The Ugly One
2013 - Film & Video (Film & Video)
101 minutes
Eric Baudelaire
With the war-torn Beirut cityscape as its backdrop—urban alleys, glistening beaches, abandoned buildings—Eric Baudelaire’s complex film, The Ugly One , unfolds in a time and place that vacillates among revolutionary narratives of the past, the fragile and ever-changing political situation of the present, and attempts to piece together the memories of those that live, or once lived, in the city. Conceived as a sequel to his documentary The Anabasis of May and Fusako Shigenobu, Masao Adachi and 27 Years Without Images (2011), Baudelaire builds the structure of the film around a story told by Japanese New Wave film director Adachi, who also narrates the film. The plot line pivots around two lovers and former resistance fighters, Michel (played by Lebanese artist and actor Rabih Mroué) and Lili (Juliette Navis); their narratives fragment and reconfigure around the screenplay, which itself intertwines with Adachi’s own history, the act of making the film, and the self-conscious and sometimes improvisatory process of writing the script.
Currently based in Paris, Franco-American artist Eric Baudelaire has developed an oeuvre primarily composed of film, but which also includes photography, silkscreen prints, performance, publications and installations. In his research-based practice, the artist examines the relationship between images, past events and their documentation. Interested in the role of the cinematographic image as an index marker, Baudelaire creates narratives in which recorded facts serve as a starting point for an exploration of the unknown. In examining the changes in human behavior though interrogating the great political structures that govern the global, national and micro-communities, Baudelaire’s practice could be read through a bio-political perspective. Navigating the experience of urban living, the global, technical and economic dependencies of war, movement and the contemporary paradigm of geographical proximity and distance, Baudelaire’s practice evokes a hauntingly provocative perspective on the current political climate.
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