Through My Eyes

This is a film about an observer, and a story about the Paris pulse at the turn of the century in the 1920s , which experiences the explosion of new artistic styles and becomes the epicentre of modern art.
At the same time, Paris is a meeting place of countless immigrants from other parts of Europe. They live through their hopes of artistic fame in search for their own place and self-recognition… from day to day, from hand to mouth.

Among them is a very talented young man, Veno Pilon, who was already established and a recognised painter at home in Primorska region, in Italy at that time.
Pilon lives in Mortparnasse, which was described by Frederic Beigbeder with the following words: 'Montparnasse is a quarter where sex, literature and death reign – this is probably why Americans loved it so much.'
There Pilon mingles with Henry Miller, Max Ernst, Ossip Zadkin, Giorgio de Chirico, Roland Oudot and others. They hang out in the cafés La Dome and Le Select.
Two years later, Pilon becomes one of them and writes in his diary:
'I wasn't attracted by painting anymore, since my faith in my own work was shattered.
I fell back to Paris, to lose myself in the crowds and forget myself. I wanted to become anonymous… Hence I was avoiding exhibitions as well.'
After his arrival in Paris, Pilon stops painting almost completely, and is instead inspired by photography: “I passionately delved in photography, which was then striving to become a new form of art.”
Pilon first makes coverage of the hustle and bustle of Montparnasse, and is together with André Kertész, Henri Cartier-Bresson and Brassaï one of the founding fathers of photographic coverage. Later, he searches for his own experimental expression and place within all these new Avant-Garde aesthetics together with Man Ray, Christian Schad and Laszlo Moholy-Nagy.
Through his portrays of the Montparnasse artists, the records of their artistic works and shots of Parisian hustle and bustle, Pilon is part of the birth of the photography, during a period when photography has reached its pinnacle.

Marriage means the end of his dedication to the bohemian life and daily socialising with the members of Montparnasse Avant-Garde. Pilon removes himself from the circle of his artistic friends, photography becomes his bread and butter, a means for providing for his family.
Nevertheless Pilon never stopped taking photographs. He continues even after his return to his homeland in 1968, where he takes photographs practically to the day of his death, which were uncovered just recently!

One of the most famous quotations by Paul Eluard reads:
'In Paris, everybody wants to be an actor; nobody is content to be a spectator.'
The very same Eluard who penned one of his long poems to one of Pilon's photographs at his first Paris exhibition in the Carrefour Art Gallery in 1934. 'This was one of the greatest recognitions of my work,' remembers Pilon. Ironically, it is exactly Pilon for whom Eluard 's quote doesn't just apply! Pilon was namely exactly that: above all an observer, a spectator, and everything else only after that. A photographer! Photography was Pilon's secret passion, a silent lover who never abandoned him and instead accompanied him all his life.

Pilon sang his song of songs with painting as well as with his mistress, photography