Art Nouveau and the art of Gothic

Tuesday January 29 - Friday February 1, Paris and Chartres, France

Our France shoot -- to film the Art Nouveau synagogue of Agoudas Hakehilos in Paris and then the cathedral at Chartres -- started smoothly… but swiftly descended into an irksome farce. This was a bit of a portent of what was to follow over the next couple of days!
The early morning sky was clear and full of wintery promise when Ian Serfontein and I met at the bright and breezy time of 6 am at London St Pancras. We carefully loaded the camera kit onto our trolley and strolled purposely towards our Eurostar set for Paris, confidently navigating our way through the throngs of our dawdling fellow passengers.

It wasn’t long before we understood their slightly hesitant behaviour – a computer error had swapped all the numbers of the carriages around, and no one knew which was their carriage. After wheeling the kit up and down the concourse more than once, we eventually plumped for a carriage which we calculated must be number 12 (even though it said it was number 5). A bit of reading and a doze later and we woke up in France.

Our first impressions of the exterior of Agoudas Hakehilos, or Synagogue Rue Pavée, were good. In the still largely Jewish area of Le Marais in Paris, it is a modest, tall and thin building, designed by Paris’ herald of Art Nouveau architecture Hector Guimard. The synagogue is still a very active place of worship, and the centre for all Orthodox Jews in Paris. Entering the interior of the synagogue however brought both visual and cultural surprises.
Despite some knowledge of Orthodox Judaism it was still difficult not to feel a little bit taken aback by my first meeting with my main contact at the building, the President of the synagogue, Daniel Altmann. He extended his hand to shake Ian’s, but because of my gender he could not take mine, and initially he barely looked at me.

It was however a real privilege to be able to be allowed to see inside the synagogue, which is usually out of bounds to the public. The design and furnishings are intricate and lovingly formed creations by Hector Guimard. It is amazing to contemplate the amount of time it must have taken him to create the synagogue and to recognise how proud he must have felt to have authored every single detail of it – even the keyhole plates are in the Art Nouveau style!
Commissioned and funded by the Agoudas Hakehilos society, which was made up of Orthodox Jews of primarily Russian origin, the building is testament both to their arrival in France at the beginning of the twentieth century and also to their intention to make Paris their permanent home. Daniel Altmann talked with pride about how the community came to have their synagogue built by Guimard. By choosing the most eminent contemporary French architect the society created for themselves a building to be proud of and signalled their intention to become an important part of France’s and future.

Our departure from Paris proved as challenging as our arrival. We planned to catch a taxi to our hire car and to whiz over to Chartres in time for an early aperitif, but this was dashed when we learnt that the pesky Parisian taxi drivers had decided to strike that afternoon and blockade the city.

In Chartres our first day was occupied with filming general views in The Cathedral of Our Lady of Chartres, and the time was enjoyable and relatively straightforward. This impressive example of Gothic architecture is genuinely awe-inspiring and we were relieved that the previous night’s rain had cleared and a bright blue sky illuminated the stained glass windows within the cavernous and fairly dark interior. We also had a good amount of time to play around with our Wally Dolly – a small trolley on tracks which allows Ian to glide the camera through objects on location. Gothic artistry and big pillars make fantastic foregrounds for gloriously coloured stained-glass window backdrops.
Day two began with an early morning canonical mass in the Cathedral. This was a small gathering, but an important way to demonstrate that although sometimes it is hard to tell, this historic building is more than just a tourist site and is still a functioning place of living worship.

The rest of our day was spent interviewing Rudy Moriniere, who is in charge of the care and restoration of various elements of the cathedral, including the Triforium (upper gallery) and the Crypt. My interview with Rudy was supposed to only take an hour or two and in the end took over five hours to complete. We were constantly interrupted by the eruption of drilling, hammering and banging. The otherwise helpful Tourist Office and Centre of National Monuments had conveniently failed to tell us that one side of the cathedral was actually being restored in these months. Consequently, despite Rudy’s valiant attempts to influence those workers whom he knew to stop work for ten minutes or so, just as a favour to him, and our attempts to wait for silence in their lunch break (only to discover different groups broke for lunch at different times) we were repeatedly interrupted by noise. After we had returned from our first break to wait for silence and we had persuaded some stained-glass window restorers to pause their work for us, it was tempting to throw ourselves off the Triforium in despair when the organist arrived and started practising his scales. "Oh yes, here is the organist now! He has come to practise. He is usually here for two, or two and a half hours," chirruped our translator cheerfully.
Our perseverance, however, was worthwhile to get a glimpse of what this great building meant to Rudy. He shared his privileged access to the Triforium with us and his excitement was clear when he got up close to the columns and pointed out traces of medieval red and ochre paint, or speculated on all the legions of workmen who had come into contact with the same walls before him. Having been a timid youth, Rudy revealed the power of this building on atheists as well as Christians, explaining that his new adult self-confidence is a result of working within the walls of the Cathedral – he really feels that the majestic spirit of the building has emboldened and changed him.

After concluding our interview, while eating a traditional Chartres macaroon and taking a final tour of this incredible cathedral, all memories of annoying building works were forgotten. Soon it was time to head back to Paris for a last delicious French supper, before returning to the UK… taxi strikes and erroneous carriage numbering notwithstanding. (Nonie Creagh-Brown)