Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster

Directing

Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster

Born 1965-06-30 · Strasbourg, France

Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster is a French filmmaker, artist and an influential figure in international contemporary art. She is known for her great variety of work in video projection, photography, and spatial installations. Since 2010 she has worked with Tristan Bera on various projects, including exhibitions, films, magazines and performances.

Acting credits

Behind the camera

No artwork available
NR

No synopsis available yet.

Personne n'est à la place de personne

2009

Christophe ‎- Olympia 2002 poster
6.0

No synopsis available yet.

Christophe ‎- Olympia 2002

2002

No artwork available
NR

Atomic Park is a place in the White Sands desert (New Mexico), not far away from Trinity Site, where the first atom bomb exploded in 1945. This national park provides an ambivalent landscape, as well suited for a picnic as for ballistic tests. A white desert, like a natural exhibition hall every movement can provoke diverse interpretations. Like a faint echo we hear Marilyn Monroe's desperate monologue and accusation about man's violence from The Misfits (1961). - Torino Film Festival

Atomic Park

2004

No artwork available
NR

A collection of 11 short poetic psycho-geographic portraits of cities and spaces from artist Dominique Gonzelez-Foerster. Ranging from the revisiting of a scene of Ming-Liang Tsai's 'Vive l'Amour' through the eyes of its protagonist, to a ticker-tape parade in Buenos Aires, from a reflection on the filmic qualities of Brasilia,to an observation of the observers of the 1999 eclipse in Paris. All soundtracked by a sensitive balance of field-recordings and carefully chosen delicate music.

Park Central

2006

De Novo poster
NR

In De Novo she turns the camera on herself, divulging the complicated thought processes behind the works she made for her five different invitations to present at the Venice Biennale. The video shows her unafraid to question the contexts of her own work in relationship to an ongoing inquiry into the nature of exhibition, exposition and narrative mythologies. - TIFF

De Novo

2009

No artwork available
8.0

Subjective observations of Corsica and Japan, accompanied by an eclectic soundtrack.

Île de beauté

1996

Christophe… Definitely poster
4.6

This intimate and musical documentary about the French megastar Christophe will have you screaming like a fan, as it tells the story of the unforgettable and nocturnal musician, author of the legendary song Aline (most recently featured in Wes Anderson’s The French Dispatch).

Christophe… Definitely

2023

Marquise poster
NR

For her contribution to the 2006 São Paulo Biennial, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster used the work of Oscar Niemeyer as a starting point for an exploration of the relationship between the exhibition space and the urban context, through an intervention in which she reproduces and multiplies existing columns, reconfiguring the reading of the rhythm and proportions of modern architecture. The Marquise, in Sao Paulo’s Parque Ibirapuera, an enormous concrete canopy designed by Niemeyer in 1954, is therefore the subject and setting of this film, in which the artist reveals her interest in ‘tropical modernism’ and develops certain recurrent themes in her work, such as ideas of shelter, playground or potential space. - MNAC

Marquise

2007

Riyo poster
NR

A Japanese teenager slacker gets a call from Riyo, a young girl he met during his vacation.

Riyo

1999

No artwork available
NR

Noreturn examines Gonzalez-Foerster's own 2008 Turbine Hall installation TH.2058, which imagined the gigantic space fifty years in the future as a dystopian nightmare of steel bunk beds under the watchful gaze of Louise Bourgeois' Spider, an H. R. Giger-like touch. In the video, she unleashes a group of schoolchildren on the installation and watch as they move from playfulness to a recognition of the installation's menace, finally huddling under a Henry Moore sculpture. - TIFF

No Return

2009

Exotourisme poster
NR

No synopsis available yet.

Exotourisme

2008

Parc Central poster
NR

"Central Park" is composed of 11 films that offer a visual, sound and poetic journey through 11 cities crossed by the artist. Fascinated by the city, space and urbanism, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster has been developing the concept of "tropical modernity" for several years, starting from the cohabitation and the confrontation between architecture and vegetation. It is around this research that she designed "Central Park" 11 films : - Kyoto (1998) - Taipei (2000) - Buenos Aires (2003) - Los Glaciares (2003) - Hong Kong (2000) - Encore Tapei (2000) - White Sands (2003) - Brasilia (1998) - Paris (1999) - Shangai (2003) - Rio de Janeiro (2000)

Parc Central

2006

No artwork available
NR

“Romilly” follows a young girl in school uniform larking amongst the bunk beds in the Turbine Hall with a group of friends. We focus on her captivating face, her red hair and rosebud mouth, as she chats with her friends, looks at her hand-held screen, reclines, and sleeps on the bunks. - LEFFEST

Romilly

2012

Plages poster
NR

The action of González-Foerster’s Plages takes place in Rio de Janeiro on New Year’s Eve, presenting the viewer with a bird’s-eye view of Copacabana’s beach crowded with white-clad revelers gathering for a seasonal firework display. Structured around a sequence of memories that intermingle personal desire with utopian ambitions for the city, it references landscape architect Roberto Burle Marx’s pavement designs and architect Sérgio Bernardes’s plan to build helix-shaped apartment blocks. For González-Foerster, the beach—with its free social movement and fluid boundary between land and sea—is a symbol of possibility. Copacabana could be a utopia, but as it starts to rain and the film nears its end, a local fisherman makes a stark announcement: “Copacabana does not exist.”

Plages

2001

No artwork available
NR

Gloria consists of a 5-minute looped tracking shot in a park in the centre of Rio, in Brazil. This park is a copy of a French-style garden, but does not have perfectly straight contours. The tropical climate and the abundance of the vegetation constantly overruns all human efforts to make it a sophisticated park. A woman’s voiceover soliloquises the tropicalisation of this garden and the possibilities for fictions that she could create in this place. - New Media Encyclopedia

Gloria

2008

Gold poster
8.0

Gold is a project of psycho-geographical investigations. Beautifully shot on location in desert regions throughout the southwest, Gold alludes to the seductive lure of the American west and its history of speculation and spectacle.

Gold

2003

Central poster
6.0

French artist Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster created the 35mm film Central in 2001. The second of a loose trilogy of films set in different waterfront locations, Central unfolds at the Star Ferry terminal in the titular area of Hong Kong, with a Cantonese voiceover guiding the work’s narrative.

Central

2001

Stories on Human Rights poster
2.2

20 short films about human rights.

Stories on Human Rights

2008

No artwork available
NR

Adaptation of Honoré de Balzac's "The Skin of Sorrow" or "The Wild Ass's Skin" (1831), said to be the last novel read by Sigmund Freud before his death. While reading it, he would have said: "This is the only book I needed".

The Magic Skin

2011

Annlee in Anzen Zone poster
NR

The third episode of No Ghost, Just a Shell, a collective project of Philippe Parreno, Pierre Huyghe and Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster. Annlee is a contemporary digital apparition, designed by a firm to embody externally assigned emotions. As she articulates her thoughts, viewers confront the fragility of a hybrid consciousness aware of its own impermanence. Shaped by the 3D animation aesthetics of Philippe Parreno, Pierre Huyghe, and Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster—who previously collaborated in 1998 on a landmark ARC exhibition—Annlee reflects ongoing dialogues with the manga Ghost in the Shell by Masamune Shirow and its cinematic adaptations. The work interrogates artificial intelligence, the limits of authorship, and the transient nature of creations rooted in emerging technologies.

Annlee in Anzen Zone

2000

No artwork available
NR

Setting up as the prequel of two existing films of similar name, Belle de jour by Luis Buñuel, and Belle toujours by Manoel de Oliveira, the film is about the new story of Severine, the main character, with Paris as background. Two artists' ideas to recompose the original films make the beautiful and unique world in this movie. - 25 FPS

Belle comme le jour

2012

No artwork available
NR

Setting up as the prequel of two existing films of similar name, Belle de jour by Luis Buñuel, and Belle toujours by Manoel de Oliveira, the film is about the new story of Severine, the main character, with Paris as background. Two artists' ideas to recompose the original films make the beautiful and unique world in this movie. - 25 FPS

Belle comme le jour

2012