Updates, Live: Benjamin Sutherland and Gonzague Pichelin

Benjamin Sutherland
(http://www.theindiefest.com/I_Frame_01.aspx?art=_031)
no copyright infringement intended

Ben Sutherland and Gonzague Pichelin are two independent filmmakers working many times together for their documentaries. I watched quite recently their Portrait of a Bookstore as an Old Man, which is a splendid description of the universe of the Parisian Shakespeare and Company. The two shared the different tasks in creating this movie: producers, directors, screenwriters, cinematographers, editors. Yesterday I watched a second documentary made by them, Skylight Kunming: Ben directed it, and his friend Gonzague did the editing.

Ben Sutherland was born in US. He currently lives in Treviso, Italy, with Susanna Bonomo and their daughter Skye. Gonzague Pichelin lives in Paris where he runs a very small outfit, Zag Zoo Films.

Ben works primarily as a freelance reporter for The Economist and Newsweek International, where he has written on subjects related to media and technology, especially defense and intelligence technologies. He goes often to Paris, where he teaches winter classes in American journalism and geopolitics at ISCPA. Formerly he worked as a screenwriter at Cinemarket Productions, a small Parisian movie company. His future project is a documentary about private military companies rushing into the now booming business of maritime-security counter piracy, escorting ships, especially in the Gulf of Aden and the Gulf of Guinea.

I found on the web an interview done by Ben Sutherland where he is expressing his opinions related to the independent movies. He believes that the future of independent filmmaking is in documentaries and reportage; it can no longer compete with big-budget fiction projects - so better be oriented in documenting the world, than in the extremely difficult and unwieldy endeavor of creating a world for a fiction film.

Well, his friend Gonzague Pichelin seems to not agree totally to the trenchant opinion of Ben: I just watched the pilot of a very poetic short film by Gonzague (185 Love Letters for a Man), which starts from reality to head toward a superb fictional universe. And by the way, their Portrait of a Bookstore as an Old Man is flooded with poetical innuendo.