Dans l'oeil de la forgeronne

We witness the creation of a metallic sculpture by French-Canadian artist Marie-Josee Roy. We follow the artist from the very beginning, as she hammers her way in raw material, then begin soldering and grinding pieces of metal together. The spectator will follow the artist by way of three different points of view. The first one: a plain, natural observation of the artist working. The second one: a fantasy about how the sculpture itself could 'experience' its own birth and first perceptions of the world. This fantasy is done by way of Stop-Motion technique. The third one being the artist herself silently giving us hints about her views on her work. Those thoughts appear as 'fire words' emerging from her eye. Those words are in french with accompanying English, Spanish and Mandarin stylized subtitles. Visually, those three points of view are colored with the three main colors of the forge: Red and Blue from intense forge flame, and Black/Grey ambiance of the location. At some point, those three colors will blend together. This film is, for the most part, completely improvised: the filmmakers wanted to 'live' the artist's own way of creating. Marie-Josee Roy work in a unique way: she approach her work with 'candeur' and humility. She never really knows what is going to emerge from the raw metallic material. Pelletier and Bundock decided they would do so as well. The storyline thus unfolded as the sculpture appeared. In fact, as the artist advanced, the filmmakers dared to suggest that the sculpture should be a couple, and not a single figure, as the sculptor originally intended. On top of everything, the very fact that the filmmakers asked the artist to modify her techniques to suit the specific needs of Stop-Motion techniques undoubtedly modified the sculpture itself. Pelletier and Bundock also did all the editing and music by way of improvisations. No standard spotting techniques were used. Decisions were made during the post-production process. Also, the artist herself remains involved in the process even in the post-production stage as she controlled all the words that were superimposed to her eye. She followed the sound design, mixing and color correcting stages very closely and came up with her own ideas. As the filmmakers modified the sculpture, the artist thus modified the film. So: 'In Her Blacksmith Eye' is not exactly a film ABOUT an artist; it is a film done WITH the artist.