Nicolas Rey

January 1, 1968

French filmmaker Nicolas Rey has directed a series of remarkable fictional documentaries, intricate feature-length (and sometimes longer) essay films that meld historical fact with fantasy and autobiography while implementing modernist literary strategies to unravel heady and playful ruminations on ideological and cinematographic technologies. Equally philosophical and structuralist-materialist, Rey's cinema uses lyrical, ludic and topographical forms of narrative to question the definition and limits of the State and cinematic illusionism. Rey's filmmaking is deeply informed by his active role as a member of the artist-run not-for-profit film laboratory, L'Abominable, one of the last bastions of photochemical artisanship in Western Europe. Employing exquisite hand-processing techniques, Rey uses photochemical grain and stain to give emotional texture and nuance to his painterly imagery which discovers moments of sublimity within seemingly quotidian scenes. — Haden Guest