Private Project

Of First and Last

David Anfam is a British Art historian, specialist of Abstract Expressionism. This film is an essay.
Its language develops in the meeting between words and images, supported by original works of
art, rarely shown (Clyfford Still). David constructs a method of seeing. The subjectivity
necessary for such a discourse, makes him take detours into his own life experience, which gives
the film an autobiographical character. For this narrative aspect, we took position against a
retrospective look, but chose instead to start from the present of the shoot, to take it as a ground to work from.
This way, we could talk about the present and evoke memories, but also to
unfold the path that helps reveal how David worked his gaze, what led him to discoveries or
achievements; the film is about seeing how he invented himself in an unfriendly context, how he
went through a history, passions, a love, losses. We have never seen in cinema an art historian
swallow his tears; and if documentaries about artists abound, it is far more rare to reveal what
animates a historian, an exhibition curator and a writer.

  • Ron Kenley
    Director
    Time Being, They think we are ghosts, What can we say?, Terra Cotta, Without here and there, Les Danseuses
  • Meriel Kenley
    Director
  • David Anfam
    Writer
  • Essay Street
    Producer
  • David Anfam
    Key Cast
    "Art critic, Historian, Curator, Writer"
  • James Squires
    Key Cast
    "Chief Conservator CSM"
  • Project Type:
    Documentary
  • Genres:
    Biography, Art
  • Runtime:
    1 hour 32 minutes 20 seconds
  • Completion Date:
    January 1, 2020
  • Production Budget:
    9,000 EUR
  • Country of Origin:
    France
  • Country of Filming:
    United States
  • Language:
    English
  • Shooting Format:
    Digital
  • Aspect Ratio:
    16:9
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    No
  • Student Project:
    No
  • Digital Cinema Package:
    Unavailable
Director Biography - Ron Kenley, Meriel Kenley

Ron Kenley
Trained as an architect with a long career in teaching, he has been making multi-media works and videos since 1998. A collaboration with the philosopher Jean Attali for Le Fresnoy, Studio d'Art Contemporain resulted in a number of visual works as film analysis (2001-2003). Over the years, he developed the capacity for handling all the aspects of filmmaking more or less single-handed. This resulted in a diverse and independent work of various lengths and subjects.

Meriel Kenley is a researcher in Dramatic Art, working on a PhD thesis at the University of Rennes 2, a graduate of École Normale Supérieure in Lyon. She writes on the creative process in contemporary theatre (Simon McBurney and works on the links between theatre and cinema (from Ingmar Bergman to Lav Diaz), as much as the uses of video in rehearsals (her current PhD, 2019-2022). She is making video independently since 2010. In 2013, “Three Poems” was selected for the Summer Exhibition at the Royal Academy, London. She is the author of six medium-length films and collaborates on Art films within the Production structure ESSAY STREET: “Of First and Last” (2020, co-director), “Pierre Skira: En atelier” (2019, co-director). In 2017 she adapted and directed the Rabindranath Tagore novel “The Home and the world”, presented at the theatre Kantor in Lyon. She is a member of the Dance-theatre collective Nyxs, recently in residence at Ramdam, the Art Centre in Sainte-Foy-lès-Lyon and of the Swiss theatre company Kokodyniack

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