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2024 / DCI 4K / 11:30
At the improvised stops of a migrant camp, I film the paltry shelters of nationals from Mexico, Central America, Pakistan and China. Making campfires with a few scattered desert shrubs, caught between worry and despair, they are waiting to be picked up. Through the glimmering haze I can make out their blank gazes staring into the void, their faces burdened with fatigue, sweat and dust. The calming effect produced by the volunteers who distributed water, food and blankets a short time ago is fading fast. By dawn tomorrow, the camp will be gone, the desert deserted, the crossing already in the past. In the light of dusk it is still possible to glimpse places strewn with disparate objects and abandoned clothing, leftovers from barely touched meals and a camp fire still burning. A chiaroscuro of shadows and embers. I look around thinking about this lack of consideration and the failure of the American Dream.
2024 / DCI 4K / 11:40
In California, around 172,000 people are homeless, 30% of the country’s total, even though the state represents only 12% of the US population. Lack of affordable housing, mental health problems and drug use are the main causes of this social crisis. This human distress is everywhere these days, but it’s far from trivial. Homeless people are affected by heatwaves, floods, which can be deadly due to lack of access to shelter, clean water and healthcare. I met homeless individuals when I was in the town of El Centro; I captured a few moments of their daily lives on the edge of Interstate 8 and the Sonoran Desert.
2023 / DCI 4K / 11:00
Owens Lake lies to the east of Sierra Nevada mountain chain in California. The Paiute tribes called it Patsiata. This body of water once covered an area of 280 square kilometres and had an average depth of 12 metres. The first explorers in the region reported that it sustained abundant aquatic life. Agricultural irrigation, followed by the diversion of the Owens River to the Los Angeles aqueduct, caused a gradual drop in the water level, until the lake dried up completely. Owens Lake was transformed into a vast arid and desolate plain; when the desert winds blew across the deposits of soda ash, huge dust clouds formed. Sand storms became a problem as toxic particles gave rise to respiratory diseases among the populace. To keep this under control, gravel was spread across the basin and the sediment kept damp. Today, nearly half of the aqueduct’s water is rechanneled toward Owens Lake in order to re-start plant growth in the lacustrine clay and restore the depleted ecosystems. Ponds have been created for migratory birds.
2022 / DCI 4K / 05:00
Dollar Tree is a short reflection on the themes of consumption, pollution and poverty. It was filmed at a garbage dump on the San Carlos Indian Reservation in Arizona, one of the poorest Native American communities in the United States. The video focuses mainly on the problem of plastic pollution. Widely distributed in stores and supermarkets, plastic bags have a negative impact on the environment. They are found almost everywhere, because they fly away easily, accumulate on the sides of roads and in waterways. They are dumped in large quantities in landfills that occupy vast lands and take years to decompose. Plastic bag waste is also a danger to animal health since animals often mistake it for food and consume it, thus blocking their digestive processes.
2020 / HD / 11:50
This video explores man-made landscapes and the effects of human intervention on the environment. The work draws a parallel between the lush golf courses of Palm Desert and the desolate landscapes surrounding the Salton Sea. It investigates how water is used in California, where water rights are among the state’s divisive political issues.
2016 / HD / 36:00
In former times, Salton Sea was a very popular tourist attraction and a paradise for fishing aficionados. Nowadays, the forlorn landscapes surrounding it seem to mirror a lost America, of an era in which everything seemed possible and accessible for all citizens. These sites give us another, unflattering image, that of a nation more divided and unequal than ever. They are like those other areas of dire poverty that are to be found all across the United States, a Third World of their own, where the most destitute live, for lack of a better alternative.
2019 / HD / 20:00
This video was filmed in Australia, in the Greater Blue Mountains World Heritage Area. The title refers to “Dreamtime” as the central theme of Aboriginal culture. In their conception of the world, all forms of life are part of a dynamic system of complex interactions. The earth, men, animals and plants are only parts of the same whole.
2015 / HD / 15:15
Hybris / Hubris was filmed on Captiva Island (Florida) and in Southern Louisiana. The video depicts encounters between disparate worlds, showcasing the intertwining of unique ecosystems and altered landscapes. It juxtaposes the sublime with the disenchanted, underscoring the ambiguous nature of our relationship with the world.
2019 / HD / 23:25
This experimental video was filmed in the polluted waters of the Staten Island boat graveyard. This uncanny, desolate place is the final resting place of numerous wrecks of all varieties and several eras: ferries, barges, fishing boats, even old steam tugs. Their hulks slowly rot away in the mud of Arthur Kill, a refinery-lined inlet still busy with tankers. Located near New Jersey’s Chemical Coast, these now toxic shores were originally home to salt marshes, forests and freshwater wetlands.
2013 / HD / 08:45
This video probes our relation to water, underscoring both its vital importance and the troubling recurrence of environmental disasters. It generates an explosive spark of cognitive dissonance between two parallel worlds: a small river with rapids and oil refineries. There is flow in both, but in different senses, with opposite consequences. It was inspired by the Lac-Mégantic rail tragedy of 2013, in which approximately 100,000 litres of crude oil spilled into the nearby Chaudière River. This incident gave rise to significant concerns regarding the potential long-term environmental impact on the waterway, wildlife and communities situated downstream.
2014 / HD / 09:50
Mirages was filmed in a residential development on Montreal’s South Shore and in the surrounding agricultural lands. We are gradually transported from one site to another, going from a fertile meadow to a desolate construction site. Transitory spaces appear, ephemeral places are set up; these metamorphoses evoke the urban sprawl that replaces rural life with suburban conditions. Those landscapes in mutation reflect the upheavals affecting our living environments and our ecosystems. They hold a mirror to the illusion of having the capacity to build when we do not even have the ability to dwell.
2012 / HD / 10:45
Critical of environmental and urban developments, this video explores the peripheries of some North American cities, strangely alike from one to the next, in that none of them feels like somewhere. Their excessively wide spaces, standardized and shapeless, generate a sense of uneasiness. Urban upheavals can turn the most familiar locale into an unrecognizable, anonymous, even forbidding place. On this blank slate, local memory is forever erased.
2010 / HD / 08:00
Private Views creates a parallel between two starkly different worlds: the wretchedness of the destitute and the conspicuous consumer lifestyle of the nouveaux riches. The video explores the themes of social inequalities, real estate speculation, and dispossession. It documents the decline of some North American cities and casts a critical eye on the emergence of wealthy new suburbs. These private residential enclaves are often gated and under surveillance. Their luxury homes, with their dubious architectural style, are the reflection of a world dominated by appearances, consumption, and social conformity.