Xavier Baert
Biography
Xavier Baert has been making movies since 1999, mostly on silver-halide film. He is also a programmer at the Cinémathèque de la Danse and a member of the artist-run film laboratory Etna. His movies are caracterized by the image of a dreamed body, dancing, and lustful, and by the nakedness. His practice evolves from film to film, and combines different formal treatments in a never-ending quest of the sublime. Being a filmmaker with an eclectic knowledge, he claims the influence of «traditional filmmakers (Wong Kar Wai, Ferrara, De Palma) as much as experimental ones such as Soukaz, Lemaître, Almuro, whose common point would be the radicality of authorship. Xavier Baert and his danser Cyril Accorsi were recently greeted as residents at the Centre National de la Danse in order to extend their artistic collaboration.
Known For & Full Filmography3 Titles
Movie - 1999, 2h 15m • Main Cast Role
A queer fiction that pays homage to 1930s Universal horror films and German Expressionism—a sacrificial rite of sex and rock.
Movie - 2001, 2h 15m • Main Cast Role
Film restored by Yves-Marie Mahé from several recordings made during past screenings, notably in the basement of the L’Etna laboratory. A car journey, then the bedroom. The naked body in bed, sleeping or smiling at the camera, splits in two and overlaps. Accompanied by Christophe’s melancholic pop songs, a raw tenderness emerges.
Movie - 2019, 2h 15m • as Lui-même
Founded in the second half of the 1990s, the experimental film association L'Etna witnessed the transition from film to digital cinema. Its premises, located in the heart of Paris, were unable to withstand gentrification.