After a bachelor's degree and a masters degree in cinema in Paris, I worked in the television and cinema for a couple of years. I wrote a science-fiction series Hyper Nuit for FranceTélévision (a popular public TV channel). This work received a financial aid from SACD (société des auteurs et compositeurs dramatiques, an organization which assists authors). And I made Jean Rollin: the stray dreamer. The film has been presented with success in numerous film festivals in France and internationally. It was released on DVD in Europe and bought by CNC (Centre National du Cinéma - National Cinema Center, a public organization).

 

Now, I am completing a movie on the musician Jackson C. Frank. Fascinated by his enigmatic and complex figure, I decided to dedicate him my new documentary. It remains of this man only 12 seconds of footage filmed during a concert, about sixty songs and dozens of photos. Thus began a real investigation on this tragic destiny.

Blues run the game

In the mid-60s, Jackson C. Frank released a masterpiece of folk music in Britain. This young American songwriter was close to Simon & Garfunkel, Bert Jansch, John Renbourn, Al Stewart, Roy Harper, Sandy Denny and many others. All of them were influenced by this enigmatic and tormented character. Shortly after the release of his unique album, he disappeared. Wrecked by a series of tragedies in his life, he chose to cut himself off from the world and got trapped by his demons.
Still today, young musicians like John Mayer, Laura Marling or Robin Pecknold perform Blues Run the Game.

This documentary follows Jackson C. Frank's footsteps to unknot the threads of a tragic destiny. Facts and songs don't express everything about a man, a personality. Who was Jackson C. Frank? Who remembers him? Where to find meaning, or even light, in a life as dark as his?

 

Jean Rollin, the stray dreamer

Who is Jean Rollin?

 

A man who has spent his childhood in the middle of some of the greatest intellectuals of the twentieth century.

An artist who has worked with Marguerite Duras for his first film.

A director's career singular and unique in French Cinema, with films overtly fantastic, surreal, poetic-disconcerting.

Constantly hammered by the critics, his films finally started to receive some recognition in France, while many fans worship him already in Europe and the United States.

Jean Rollin signs a marginal and unknown work marked by death and nostalgia, and whose main obsession is the time, that of the wandering and dreams.

 

Jean Rollin died in December 2010 at the age of 72. This documentary is the portrait of the real artist, the last surrealist, a poet who created his very own dreamworld. A tribute to a unique movie director.