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Jane Kozlowski
I regularly work with performing artists: musicians, dancers, actors, storytellers, circus artists. I create film objects for them to promote their creations. I love these encounters; this environment fascinates me. For a long time, I have wanted to highlight what the public never sees: the backstage, the stages and processes that lead to the performance to question art, creation, and the place of performance in society. Among all the artistic disciplines I encounter, the circus tells me something archaic, a primitive form of performing. The risk-taking, the physical prowess, but also the lifestyle it requires, embody the harshness of the artistic struggle. From my first encounter with Cirk VOST, I knew I had found the place to embody my desire for film. VOST is one of the rare circuses in France whose artists practice high-flying. And at VOST, it's obvious: defying the void is not just about the spectacular. It's also a way of approaching life and the world. Repeat, work, fall, start again: at Cirk VOST, we play with gravity in both the literal and figurative senses. Shared flight.
– Jane Kozlowski –
Documentary film "Workers of the Void"
In co-production with France Télévisions, Lyon Capitale TV and CirkVOST
With the participation of the National Center for Cinema and the Animated Image
With the support of the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes Region and the participation of the CNC and the Nouvelle-Aquitaine Region,
in partnership with the CNC and the support of ALCA and Alès Mécénat
Telling the story of the life of the Cirk VOST collective is to reveal a colossal, crazy universe, as harsh as it is poetic and gentle. It is to question the balance between the individual and the collective. Far from a Cartesian vision of the problems of the group and the individual, my gaze focuses on the beauty of a collective in an imaginary world that tells a little about each person. There are two almost antagonistic aspects, two beacons between which the narrative line of my film balances. On the one hand, a capture of the work and daily life of this circus life which, despite its harshness, transports the viewer without embellishment into a world on the margins. The treatment is raw – direct cinema, sequence shots, formal experiments to better capture the words or the recurring motif of the fall. On the other hand, there are staged, poetic sequences which "put into cinema", in a universe which belongs to the circus, the various imaginations which make up the group, allowing the different views which the artists have on themselves, their profession, their way of life to filter through, recreated in characters which resemble them.
– Jane Kozlowski –
VOST, it's high-flying.
It is the tallest marquee in Europe.
It is a collective without hierarchy, without leader, without director.
These are women and men who give their body and soul to make a show happen, braving technical, financial or personal difficulties.
VOST, these are people whose job is to jump into the void to make us fall into a world more open than the vast world.
Welcome to the planet VOST!
Jane Kozlowski
Biography
Documentary film director, graduate of the Ateliers Varan, I tell the reality that surrounds me in images, it then becomes film: Documentaries, fictions, teasers, clips, institutional… My job consists above all in questioning myself: I make films because I ask myself questions, never because I have an answer.
Since my "love at first sight" meeting in 2018 with CirkVOST, I have made several teasers and recordings of the company's shows. When I told them about my desire for a documentary film, they all agreed. At CirkVOST, every decision is collective; later I realized that at VOST we never say no, it's the principle of the clown. So I have their support and their trust, they accompany me in my creative process, willingly lending themselves to the game of my artistic proposals, take care of the logistics when I come to scout for this film. Thus, as soon as it is possible for me to go on tour with CirkVOST, I am accommodated in a caravan, I take my meals with each family and meet each individual who makes up the group in their daily life.
– Jane Kozlowski –
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