Artist and filmmaker Asa Mader collaborates with lighting and installation designer A.J. Weissbard and sound artist and composer Rebecca Horrox to create an immersive feature-length film (12-channels) and sound installation (16-parts), to be presented this August throughout the garden and inside the 17th-century chapel of a private chateau in the South of France. 

This work is the culmination of a process Asa Mader began several years ago in attempting to find a new form of portraiture, one he calls “moving portraits” or more specifically “moving image portraits.” Mader first explored the idea in 2006 with a diptych of authors, which included Pulitzer Prize nominee Suketu Mehta (“Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found”) and Pavan Varma. He went on to develop the form with moving portraits of artists such as Mikhail Baryshnikov and the acclaimed war photographer James Nachtwey. 

The challenge of pushing the process of moving portraiture one step further with sixteen members and four generations of a family - while telling the story of how they ended up where they are now - made for an ambitious undertaking, unlike any Mader had previously attempted.

Presented on 12 vertical screens and a retro-projection in the chapel of an estate in Provence, France, the story of the family unfolds, as do the emotional responses of each family member. From laughter to tears, Mader presents us the intimate inner-workings of a clan on its most human level. Meanwhile, a sound composition flows through the garden, representing each of the 16 members of the family - as if their collective spirit has been set loose to run through the estate.