Cinema of exhibition? Autobiographical cinema? Never mind the definitions, a new kind of cinema is being invented by Clarisse Hahn, who mixes genres. (…) Her camera is like an extension of her body in the way she negotiates the world. But wether she is exploring her own family or evoking a protesting tribe across the ocean, it’s all a matter of fiddling the right distance.

Catherine Millet. Clarisse Hahn: People on the line. Art press, septembre 2012

Clarisse Hahn questions the codes associated with the “being-together”. Not only by filming communities the rites of which she examines in details, but by disrupting the contemplator/contemplated relation. (…) Clarisse Hahn has been studying the body in its intimate and social dimension. (…) She directly disrupts her shows, confronting violent scenes while establishing emotional relations with her protagonists. Although her body is rarely involved, she does not cease to “imperil her value system”. An involvement that allows a more immediate freeing of speech. With her way of approaching reality, she explores a new route: a route that nevertheless remains truly documentary, although it appears to be pushed to its outer limits, because it welcomes its transgressions. (…) Through her balancing act on the borderline by which she upsets our relation to the world, the protocols of contemporary art (the ambulatory habits) and the documentary devices (which she freely rearranges), she takes part in bringing about the necessary changes in the genres without ever confusing them.


Ovidie
2000
color video, duration 116’
“Ovidie is a young porn actress I met in the winter 2000. We started working together and became friends. For a year, I accompanied her on film sets, Internet live shows etc. Pornography is not shown in its media guise. Rather it is thought of as a reality which enables us to reflect on the relationships established between people. On a film set, the director is shown manipulating bodies until he obtains an improbable edifice of flesh. Characters are frozen in ecstatic poses, bodies at work are committed to the fashioning of an image of pleasure. This film questions the various ways of relating to others: touching, speaking… Where is the point of contact situated?

For a few months, I shared my flat with Ovidie and her husband. They allowed me to film their discussions and arguments. From the contradictory feelings and desires they express a more general questioning emerges, pointing out the complexity of relationships whether within the couple, in sex or at work.” - Clarisse Hahn