When I say cinematic wanderings I mean those situations where you begin to stray from your original goal and start to experience the location your are in as a person rather than a filmmaker. But you can’t help yourself when you see gorgeous scenery through the lens of a camera. It’s the home video dad syndrome, where everything merits filming to a certain degree. But, with all the choices, and daylight shrinking like cellophane near a hot burner, you must decide what you will press the record button for….
One such experience can be relayed here. I set upon scouting a small town in France for Nostradamus 2012.
Just a short jaunt south of Paris, the small town of Bourges seemed to play hide and seek from my art books whereas Paris and Chartres danced about art history texts like cabaret urchins. And yet, the cathedral in Chartres was proving to be an elusive exhibitionist and denied us any form of permit for us to train our cameras onto. I knew we needed a gothic cathedral, if not Chartres, then what? Our historical expert and master of esoteric trivia, Jay Weidner, suggested Bourges not just for its cathedral, but also for its reputation as “THE” place to practice alchemy during The Renaissance. Since we were exploring the idea of Nostradamus as a dabbler in alchemy, we scheduled an obligatory day in Bourges.
Once there, my attention turned away from the religious to the esoteric. Our researcher noted several highlights: Hotel Lallemont, Palais Jacques Coeur and of course the cathedral. Not certain where to start filming our schedule coalesced around the availability of a curator at each location. So Palais Jacques Coeur opened its doors to us first.
Though I hoped to find a lab of alchemy at this mansion, a quick scout revealed that many parts of the building were still being restored and the alchemy had long since evaporated along with any of the solutions it may have contained. However, I have never seen any house that looked this badass. Perhaps recognizing the awesome that Jaques left behind, the townspeople dedicated a super cool(okay I’m too old to say supercool but there it is) statue of him in a plaza, a statue in which he gazes upon his gothic crib.
Anyway, you can tell I was impressed. The curator started telling us Jaques’ life story through a translator. Details of his story trickled in with larger arcs of local legend, but we learned that Jaques was a French merchant who made a journey to the middle east, and there perhaps, learned the ancient mystic arts of alchemy and spiritual illumination. Clearly, he saw some shit.
I started to feel as if I had lived there in another time; the building’s stone and wood seemed to cast a spell on me as well as our writer, Sarah Hollister and cinematographer, Michael Bowie. Snapping back to the goal at hand, we had to quickly settle on something to film as we were expected at the next location in two hours. Architecture owned the day, and so we navigated our lens to a fresco inside the mansion’s chapel.
There we saw the complement to a four ages philosophy that we had witnessed earlier at Notre Dames in Paris. Four firgures graced two corners of two walls: a lion , a bull, an angel and an eagle. Each was associated with a gospel from the New Testament: Matthew, Mark , Luke and John. Each gospel has been interpreted by esotericists as an age in human history. You may have heard, or you may not even care that we are in the age of Aquarius. We zoomed in on each figure, and you might dismiss this as just shorthand for lessons in the gospel but clearly these figures were important as we saw them again at the catedral. The limestone was somewhat eroded, but the figures bared themselves above an entrance, meticulously carved and surrounding the main event, Jesus Christ the sacrificial lamb himself.
We spent hours at the cathedral and I pondered its nature, that of a UFO. The architecture of the cathedral at Bourges predates the towering designs of the familiar French cathedrals. It squats on a hill in the city like a giant taking a nap. Despite it’s gargantuan nature, it has a grace, and I half expected to see it lift off having pocketed an anti gravity aesthetic.
I could go on, and I certainly enjoyed my time there with our crew, Michael Bowie, Gary Groth, Jay Weidner, Sarah Hollister, Bertrand and Julie Cohen and the undeniable Nathalie, but I will stop here and leave you with the notion that, even though I am writing from home and the trip has long since ended, I am still wandering in that cinematic landscape of Bourges.
Peace,
Andy
