Sylvaine Dampierre

She has worked as a film editor, and joined the Ateliers Varan as a film making trainer. In 2010, she founded Varan Caraïbe in Guadeloupe. She has supervised training workshops in Guadeloupe in filmmaking, editing and web documentary.
She has directed 4 documentaries in the series D’un jardin, l’autre.These films are about family or social gardens : In L’île (The Island – 60’ – 1998) , she follows a gardener who has been renting a plot of land on the tip of Saint-Germain Island for 45 years. This plot of land faces the former Renault factory in Boulogne-Billancourt, where he has worked all his life. Un enclos (The enclosure – 75’ – 1999 -) is about the garden of the women’s prison in Rennes. She directed La Rivière des galets (- 2000 62’) in a garden for integration in Reunion Island. She documented community gardens in New York in Green Guérilla (60’ – 2003). She examined Chernobyl and its consequences in Pouvons-nous vivre ici? (Can we live here? – 2002 – 60’).
She devoted her first feature film to Guadeloupe, where her father was born, with Le Pays à l’envers (The country upside down – 90’ – 2005). She returns to the land of her father’s childhood. She investigates the time of slavery, going back in time to find the traces of her family name. In 1848, when slavery was abolished, slaves became citizens. Civil registrars arbitrarily assigned them a family name.
She collaborated with the photographer Bernard Gomez on the design of photography books (In 2019, Marronnages Editions Loco) and common exhibitions (IN SITU, Galerie M Paris, Feb 2023).
Her last feature documentary Paroles de Nègres (Words of Negroes – 80’ – 2020), received the International Critics’ Award in Dokleipzig and the Best Feature Documentary Award at TTFF ‘(Trinidad).