Joël Bartoloméo (1957), Christophe Berhault (1958), William S. Burroughs (1914-1997), Stan Brakhage (1933-2003), Pedro Costa (1959), Robert Duncan (1919-1988), George Hackathorne (1896-1940), Arthur Hornblow (1893-1976), Derek Jarman (1942-1994), Jim Jarmusch (1953), Jess (1923-2004), Stanley Kubrick (1928-1999), Bertrand Mandico (1977), Chris Marker (1921-2012), Marie-Laure de Noailles (1902-1970), Christian Patterson (1972), John Truwe (1915-1981), Agnès Varda (1928-2019) and Jane Wodening (1936).

The scrapbook is an Anglo-Saxon practice combining photo album and diary. It can include drawings, stamps, post cards, newspaper clippings, and event invitations. The multiplicity of creative options for collage explains the number of artists who have taken up the practice as a genre in its own right, using it to compose new visual worlds. This was the case for avant-garde filmmakers in the 20th century such as Derek Jarman, Agnès Varda, Chris Marker, or more recently, Pedro Costa and Bertrand Mandico.

The exhibition showcases some of the best scrapbooks by filmmakers–who we meet here as photographers, poets, and illustrators. It presents a journey to the hidden creative origins of their films, providing access to private documents and unveiling the inner world at the heart of the creative process. Also included are figures who participated in their own way in the production of poetic, free-form films, such as William S. Burroughs (author and screenwriter) and Marie-Laure de Noailles (painter and producer), both of whom practiced the most experimental forms of scrapbooking, combining emotional and political.

The group exhibition focusses on artists with radical styles, pushing the boundaries of autofiction to the max (further extended on Instagram, whose little-known ancestor is perhaps the scrapbook).

Matthieu Orléan, curator at the Cinémathèque Française, sheds light on these scrapbooks, whose hybrid forms nevertheless share a deeply cinematic grammar. If the films are a form of the present, the scrapbook is both their past (where they were drafted) and their future (as archive). Thus cinema resides here both as negative and positive, a sometimes-missing link in the chain, fundamental to understanding the circulation, survival, and apotheosis of modern images.

Matthieu Orléan


Curatorial Research Grant 
For the sixth consecutive year, the Rencontres d’Arles is offering a curatorial research grant open to all curators. Since its inception in 2018, the grant has been awarded to Sonia Voss, Magali Nachtergael & Anne Reverseau, Clara Bouveresse, István Virágvölgyi, Justinien Tribillon & Offshore Studio, Clara Bastid & Marie Robert, Monica Allende, Adam Broomberg & Shoair Mavlian, Damarice Amao, Jean-Christophe Arcos, Nestan Nijaradze, Matthieu Orléan, Kathrin Schönegg, Sogol & Joubeen Studio. The Rencontres d'Arles 2023 curatorial research grant has been given to María Wills Londoño and Andrés Matute Echeverri for the Vampires fear no looking glass project.