Chiara Clemente / “Our City Dreams” / Feature Documentary

“The city in “Our City Dreams” is New York, serving as home base for the five powerhouse femme artists profiled in Chiara Clemente’s exquisitely crafted docu. Chiara Clemente chooses renowned, wildly eclectic creators who span the spectrum in age, provenance and medium, connected to the city through a complex, ever-changing dialectic. Combining formats and textures with a hypnotic, shape-shifting score, pic itself quite simply ranks as a work of art.”” (Variety)

New York City offers inspiration and haven to five female artists in “Our City Dreams,” a lyrical documentary about the intersection of location and imagination.

“I did art because I didn’t want to die,” says the restless painter Ghada Amer, who responds to the repressive culture of her native Egypt with vast embroidered canvases celebrating nakedly intertwined female figures. Less erotic but equally confrontational are the arresting woodcuts of Swoon, whose expressive, full-size portraits of street people are cut laboriously from plywood on the floor of her tiny apartment.

Allotting scrupulously equal time to each of her subjects, the director, Chiara Clemente, makes smooth transitions among styles, mediums and personalities. Beatific sculptures by Kiki Smith give way to painted bloody phalluses by Nancy Spero.

Throughout, the women are encouraged to explore the pull of their adopted city, and watching the Belgrade-born artist Marina Abramovic perform selections from her grueling, gargantuan work “Seven Easy Pieces,” it’s difficult to imagine any space but the Guggenheim as hospitable.

Nevertheless, one of the movie’s liveliest sections follows the limber Ms. Abramovic (possibly the youngest-looking sexagenarian to exist outside of Hollywood) to Phuket, Thailand, to prepare for her post-tsunami piece, “God Punishing.” If I can wield a bullwhip with that degree of enthusiasm when I’m 60, I’ll be a happy woman indeed. ( Jeannette Catsoulis for the New York Times)

Chiara Clemente / Publicis 133 / Atelier Persol / Worlwide Campaign

Trailer

Vanina Sorrenti / “Inspiration”

Kolkoz / “Shapes and Design”

Sebastien Tellier / “Structure and Strength”

Robert Montgomery / “Beauty is in the details”

Futura / “Time refines the Artist to help him refine the art”

Mathilde Monnier

To celebrate the artful craft that goes into each pair of Persol, 8 world-renowned artists were invited to a XV century manor in Florence. During their stay, they created works of art and told their story, giving the world a rare glimpse into their minds. Welcome to Atelier Persol directed by Chiara Clemente.

Chiara Clemente / “Ada and Alex”/ Baccarat starring Harcourt / Branded Content

In its around the world journey through time and continents, the iconic Harcourt, has been at the centre of great stories to become a timeless object of desire and prestige for any occasion. From this great source of inspiration, Chiara Clemente, Sonia Sieff, Joséphine de la Baume have created three legendary stories…​

“In portraying Ada and Alex Katz for Baccarat, I wanted to celebrate their love and the way to continuously inspire each other. Like Baccarat, they possess the beauty and the longevity and impeccable precision” Chiara Clemente

Chiara Clemente / Nowness / “Matteo Garrone: “The Player”

The Cannes Grand Prix-Winner Talks Love, Chance and Celluloid with Fellow Director Chiara Clemente

Touted as the pioneer of a renaissance in Italian cinema, director Matteo Garrone takes us through the shadowy streets of his native Rome and into an intimate card game in this new film by Chiara Clemente. Since his rise to prominence after winning the Sacher d’Oro award for the short Silhouette in 1996, Garrone has become known and feted internationally for the 2008 film Gomorrah, the nuanced chronicle of the Casalesi clan—a faction of Naples’ notorious Camorra—that earned him multiple Best Director awards while unveiling tensions and intimacies between the Italian government and the country’s organized crime syndicates. His latest work, Reality, takes on the world of the ubiquitous television genre. In anticipation of its release, Garrone opened up his life in the Italian capital to filmmaker Clemente, whose own acclaimed work includes the Sundance Channel’s Beginnings as well as the series Made Here: Performing Artists on Work and Life in New York City. Clemente was a fan of Garrone’s when she began working on today’s short, having been entranced and inspired after seeing The Embalmer as a recent film school grad, yet she quickly found they had more in common than their chosen profession. “I discovered shortly after we started talking that his mother took amazing photographs of my mother when she was very young and a theater actress,” muses the director. “Here I was doing a portrait of him, and his mother had done a similar thing with my mother more than 30 years before.” Interlacing the multicultural surrounds of Garrone’s city with his love of sensuality and the at times unpredictable game of poker, Clemente’s intimate portrait reveals that “the most exciting moments in a documentary happen by chance.”