Christian Pouget – Maelström for improvisers (Films UtôpïK, 2025)

By Paul Acquaro

A maelstrom ... "a powerful whirlpool in the sea or a river" or "a situation or state of confused movement or violent turmoil" ... pick your definition or take both as you dive into the pool of riches that French film director Christian Pouget mixes together in a rich amalgam of sound and image. Featuring the music of 22 musicians from America to Europe to Asia, Pouget lets their own words and brilliant selections of solo playing in choice environments explore and explain improvisation. 

 

About two-thirds through the film French saxophonist Sakina Abdou explains that when she realized that she had a connection to free jazz - and wanted to be a part of it - she had to ask what it meant it to do so, now. It's different today than it was when it began, she says, a 'whole different utopia.' No, we do not get a an answer, rather we cut to seeing and hearing Abdou playing freely, but tonally, along a stream with a overpass behind her. Her tones echo out of the tunnel that the stream is passing through. Perhaps its symbolic, perhaps it is just where she is playing.

 

Maelstrom moves like this. From the start we are thrown into a qualitative research study with only an implied research question. It begins, for example, with jazz maverick, French saxophonist Daunik Lazro talking about survival as an artist in an unforgiving world, to questions of perception and being perceived by Abdou, to discussions about the variety of sound from Japanese pianist Sakoto Fujji, who posits that her country features the extremes of music - and then goes on to perform a solo piece that is spacious and abstract as well as dense and urgent.

 

Setting plays a sumptuous role. We see Lazro playing in a sort of junkyard, surrounded by the husks of discarded camping trailers, invoking the spirit and sounds of Albert Ayler on his saxophone. Later, Roberto Ottaviano blows his soprano sax while walking along a wall of sun bleached stones, like the horn is providing orientation through echolocation. Then there is Adbou playing near an urban stream, providing a juxtaposition between nature flow and mankind's structures. The most playful, and perhaps climax of imagery, is trumpeter Susana Santos Silva improvising amongst and with the macabre mechanical creatures making musical chaos in sculptor Daniel Depoutot's Strasbourg workshop. It is all rather visually striking and metaphorically compelling.

 

Throughout the film, the artists providing snippets of observation or insights gained over their years of working in the world of improvised music. The themes connect subtly - there is no title screen with the theme of say "COMMUNICATION" in bold block lettering to ground the conversation, rather, the words touch loosely on themes that shift over the course of the film, and in the end, leave an impression of the values and commonality of uncommon music making.

 

The film is one to relish both for it's imagery and the solo pieces that each musician performs - they are both exemplars of their individual styles and rich in emotion. 

 

Watch the trailer here. 

Full list of artists featured in the film:
Satoko Fujii, Gerry Hemingway, Isabelle Duthoit, Evan Parker, Susana Santos Silva, Daniel Depoutot, Kahil El Zabar, Daunik Lazro, Joe Morris, Mat Maneri, Joëlle Léandre, Christiane Bopp, Betty Hovette, Sonia Sanchez, Agusti Fernandez, Clara Levy, Roberto Ottaviano, Emanuele Parrini, Silvia Bolognesi, Sakina Abdou, Raymond Boni, and Benat Achiary.