Nicolas Humbert

Why should I buy a bed when all that I want is sleep?

The American minimalist poet Robert Lax (1915-2000) is praised for his originality and spirituality. He was a companion of the painter Ad Reinhardt and the religious philosopher and monk Thomas Merton, who had a strong influence on the poets of the beat generation. After decades of a nomadic life between America and Europe, working as a screenwriter in Hollywood, as a film critic in New York and as a clown in an Italian itinerant circus, he has lived withdrawn for 30 years on the Greek island of Patmos. In his poetry, Robert Lax pursues a maximum compression of language – to the point where only individual words and syllables remain which represent the essence of language. His artistic concept of reduction, in which a pause becomes as important as the things said, makes Lax a kindred spirit of the American composer John Cage. The present films are the outcome of a long-standing friendship between Robert Lax and the filmmakers Nicolas Humbert and Werner Penzel.Read More »

Synopsis
People’s associations with flora goes back a long way, taking us back to our own roots as well as to new ways of life and creative potential that reveal themselves as we deal with plants. ‘Wild Plants’ is a film that follows these clues and takes us to urban gardens in Detroit, to Native American philosopher Milo Yellow Hair in Wounded Knee, to the wild plantations of Zurich’s legendary ‘Guerilla Gardener’ Maurice Maggi, and to the innovative horticulture cooperative ‘Les Jardins de Cocagne’ in Geneva.Read More »

from imdb,
“This film is a snapshot of the life of Fred Frith, an English-born multi-instrumentalist, composer, and improvisor. It finds him in Europe, Japan, and the US, working and playing with a variety of avant garde artists.

There is no narrative, or narrator. The images blend with his music, and visa versa, creating a narrative all their own. His performances, widely varied, reveal a light hearted intensity. In one scene, he uses his violin to ‘sing’ with seagulls and, in another, he conducts a quartet. Most of all, it shows him as a human being whose being is infused with music. It pours out of him in all its varied forms, and he welcomes it all.Read More »