Une vision au bord de la faille : Breyten Breytenbach peint ses vers
( Vision from the Edge : Breyten Breytenbach Painting the Lines )

Mary Stephen
1998 - 56 min - 16 mm - Couleur - France, Pays-Bas

September, the Frans Hals Museum in Haarlem, the Netherlands.
Breyten Breytenbach, poet, painter and writer, creates 6 panels/scrolls which will hang from the ceiling of the exhibition hall. These are part of a retrospective of his paintings at the occasion of the Jacobus Van Looy prize.
The scrolls, 6 poems handpainted with illustrations, become the backdrop for a tapestry of sounds and images : poems, texts on paintings, memories of South Africa where the artist was born, thoughts of other places where the poet lives in exile since 1959. He is painting the lines and speaking with his own words about the Self, the Other, the private person, the public persona and the creative process.
Quite the contrary of a "social documentary", this film offers glimpses of a man who has spent his life away from the "mainstream", with his very specific, very own vision from the edge.