L'Ampleur de Smilowski
Yohan Laffort, Jean-Michel Compiègne
2004 - 35 min - DV Cam - Couleur - France

Jean Smilowski died in 1989, in Lille, to everyone’s indifference. He lived in the city’s fringes, in “La Poterne” locality -a true no man’s land- in a wooden hut without comfort, with his parents.
In his “ranch” that he rebuilt after his mother’s death, he would not cease to paint, to build all sorts of diverse objects, to recreate an ideal world, fantasised, imagined, until his expulsion and his relocation in social housing, a few years before his death.
He leaves us with a protean work, witness of his sufferings and his passing through the tormented last century, a work oriented towards the image that fascinated him, as well as great men with whom he didn’t miss an occasion to identify himself.
Jacques Bonnaffé lent his talent, his voice, his energy, to guide us on the traces of this artist and help us, with sensitivity, to catch a glimpse of this man and creator’s universe.