Karim
Zeriahen
From live stage images to life in images, the director and video artist Karim Zeriahen seems to have found the shortest way. Since the beginning of the 90s, when he worked in close relationship with choreographer Philippe Decouflé, he learned how to put the art of stage in motion, contemporary dance most of the time. Karim Zeriahen then starts a fruitful collaboration with Montpellier based choreographer Mathilde Monnier. Stop, Videlilah, day of night, short films adapted from her stage creations. Each time, Karim Zeriahen's camera takes over the place with movement, the body language is not frozen but magnified. Choreographer Herman Diephuis also joins this gallery of dancing portraits. Documentaries on figures such like Albert Maysles or Hubert de Givenchy and from Joe Dalessandro to Paul Morrissey, he sets a signature, a camera always in action with confidence.
Today the director goes further with a new project and tracks the subtle movements of the body language beyond the physical appearance. A collection of living portraits as unique pièces reminding us of the master portraitists of renaissance. These living natures consists in filming the subject in a certain amount of time, almost still, with signs of respiration, eye blinks, as if it were posing for a painting. They are then displayed on a flat screen with a memory card. With this collection starting, Karim Zeriahen, with his documentary and artist vision, interrogates himself about the virtual world filled with images. By taking a pause, and his models with him, he questions the way we look at things, the way we look at life.