00:03

I am.

00:07

I first came across Our Days of Gold when it started cropping up in my stream.

00:22

I'm just looking for it now.

00:28

They were.

00:29

Umm, around the time when the visual quality of the Instagram got really good and they they had a

particular look to them.

00:47

They looked a bit like film stills or analogue photographs.

00:56

I'm just looking for one.

00:59

Sure one will come up in a minute.

01:02

One thing about them was they they came up quite consistently regularly appearing in the feed.

01:14

But they didn't seem to be any rhyme nor reason to them beyond the fact that they all had a particular

visual quality and a particular atmosphere which was kind of not pushy but quite intriguing and quiet,

which is not what you usually get on the on the Instagram feeds.

01:45

So I just started to look at them and they seemed to be telling some kind of story about someone called

Celine and her family.

01:55

And it looked a bit like a an unmade or unseen Eric Romer movie, a summer of sunshine on the beach.

02:08

And the appearance of them was kind of consistently intriguing because they didn't stop coming.

02:18

And sometimes there was another aspect added to the story.

02:23

And sometimes there was a kind of repetition of the same scene over and over and over again for quite a long time.

02:33

And then another character would appear or they would move to a room or a sort of places like a orchard

or they will be down by the beach.

02:51

And I'm still you can see how much stuff there is on the Instagram because I'm still searching for them

and I haven't seen one yet.

03:02

But I will get to one of them eventually. And all they had was enigmatic titles like Cécile's Daughters Go Down to the beach or or this is a pair of

03:08

flip flops.

03:34

And so I thought they were publicizing a movie and I just kind of clicked on to them.

03:43

And I've been doing it ever since.

03:47

Well, where is it?

03:52

I'm going to search for it.

03:56

Our Days of Gold.

4:06

Our Days of Gold.

04:11

There you are.

04:13

There's one of them, and then there's another.

04:20

And they carry on.

04:23

Little moments, frozen.

04:25

Moments from a film with no explanation, but seemingly a pattern of meaning which somebody was

putting out week after week, month after month, year after year.

04:54

Like a mysterious memory of a particular moment in a summer by the beach connected to Celine.

05:13

This one says.

05:15

On an afternoon of the summer of 2005, Celine's daughters went to the beach.

05:25

Here it is.

05:31

Is it going to flip around?

05:36

I've gone and liked it.

05:38

But if you look below, you'll see that there's a whole stream of stories going on, with stills from different

parts of what seems to be a memory or a film or a moment and these of their own space.

06:03

But I I didn't look at these at first.

06:07

I just noted the arrival of the individual images in my image stream.

06:24

And for me that was a kind of short interruption, a short moment when between when I was looking at

other things, just took me somewhere else for a while.

06:46

But the visual quality was always very similar, very kind of consistent, and you could tell that it was one of

the days of gold images because of the look of it and the care with which it had been put together and the

fact that it wasn't trying to sell you anything.

07:11

Actually, it was just trying to evoke a moment amongst a lot of other moments, and clearly meant

something to someone else.

07:25

We just have a look at one of them.

07:28

Say there's one.7:38

Wait, what's that?

07:45

I'm sure you can read that.

07:51

But of course that's not the way I viewed them as lots.

07:55

One after the other, after the other after the other, but as individual moments, OK?

00:02 

This feels so exciting, like I'm sitting down to watch a movie or something like that.

00:11

Anyway, um it was interesting scrolling all the way back through and catching little glimpses of those things and thinking, I don't know that person. Who

00:20

is that person? Um this is a person I didn't feel like I knew

00:26

I don't know this man.

00:30

Um, but Cécile does.

00:36

Um, I have such a nostalgic, wonderful, just warm reaction to these uh images that that are so clearly film.

00:49

Um, that I don't know, they just make me happy. It's strange. And I think

00:55

the whole It's…It's funny. I'm seeing now…

00:59

We had just finished lunch circa 2003…and yet there's part of me that feels like this this project feels older than that to me somehow.

01:15.

Um like the 80s or something. And maybe it's that nostalgic feeling of like it feels like it could be my childhoodor adolescence or something. 

01:26

and maybe it's just the quality of the film, but I I love that that sense. 

01:32

I look at this and oh, there's a turtle there. Um I didn't realize there's a turtle.

01:36

I would have thought that was a bunny because I know there's a bunny, but then I don't know. Then I just saw adog.

01:44

So maybe it wasn't a bunny. Maybe it was this dog. Dog and turtle.

01:49

Maybe that's it.

01:54

Um I also um this just so pleasing to me in general. I really love her armpit hair.

02:02 

Thank you for that. Um I think I look at these and have

02:07

I look at these and have so…

02:13

It's wonderful. And I love the distressed area of the picture. I mean…

02:20

maybe that's also what makes it seem older and the and the colours. It's so…

02:31

Um I think I think about this project and think I imagine this group of people…

02:41

Oh, those are flowers. I thought they were sparklers for a minute. Is it like a double exposure or something?

02:49

I don't even know. That's great.

02:55

um I think I imagine this group of friends of artists sort of coming together in some French country home and uh and just

03:05

some French country home and uh and just spending, you know, a week or something um dressing up and taking pictures and sort of inventing narrative and

03:19

like, oh, I So, let's have this character and this character get married and then um and then we get to see the wedding and…

03:32

um I've never gone through it this way before sort of from the outset.

03:41

I don't know the man, but I know the lemon. Oh, Cécile's husband. 

03:45

My goodness. I wonder if something happens to him because I don't feel like he's always around.

04:01

um I think um I was thinking about the why I might have ideas about the…

04:07

80s for these and I think recently I saw the um the film that was made of the André Aciman (I think that's how you say his name) novel

04:19

um Call Me By Your Name, with Timothée Chalamet and Armie Hammer and it’s set in the 80s in you know it's an Italian country home but there's a really, there's such a similar vibe to it

04:38

and it's so familiar to me. These are new these I mean I know they're not new

04:41

I mean I know they're not new, they're new to me.

04:48

The pier, um oh

04:48

um oh

That's beautiful…furs

05:11

The costumes…This is funny.

I don't know Cécile’s husband. 

05:17

I don’t know, somehow Cecile's husband seems to not have existed for me

05:24

me in maybe like you know when I usually see these in feeds however stupid Instagram figures out what to show you. you know, maybe I don't I don't see these or maybe

05:40

I don't recognize them as part of the  project necessarily like that that I don't associate him with those with those images and they don't have such a resonance to me.

06:00.

um like those sorts of timeless summer free, sensual, languorous photos of the garden and the play in the in the garden, costumes and colours.

06:27

Um, there's something so nice when there's a like a burst of a different colour. Ah, tiara

06:51

That tenderness between them that’s so apparent, always.

07:04

Oh, who is this? Cécile’s sister-in-law. Huh? I don't know her either.

07:22

Um, don't think I know what a name day celebration is.

07:25

I think I would have thought that was something in childhood, not necessarily, I don’t know, not adulthood.

07:37

Wow that’s a great tank top.

07:48

I think I love the fashion. Yellow. Just so beautiful.  

08:03.

She’s so beautiful, Cécile, I'm very bad at guessing how old people are. I don't know that I would know how old she was then. 

08:19

Cecil's husband and daughter. So, is he, her father?

08:23

Um, you know, and that's part of what the magic that's happening here. Oh, Black Lives Matter. June 2020.

08:40

It's funny to jump out of this world and into our world

08:43

This is such a different world.

08:45

Oh, look. Cécile has a green bikini, too.

08:51

Um, I don’t remember what I was thinking. I do. I just, I wonder so much about the project of this. It seems so epic and I'm just getting a glimpse into these lives that are unfolding.

09:23

I love pictures of long hair from the back and I am sure that was… Oh, look. You can even see I've saved this in my personal collection of photographs of people with long hair from the back. And I always think maybe I'll do something with it. I don't know.

09:41

Um I just love hanging on to them. They're really beautiful to me. Are they

09:44

They're really beautiful to me. Are they…Are they back together? Is he visiting? And how come he always appears with leopard prints?

09:53

I feel like I should probably wrap this up, but I…Uh, that looks wonderful. Her eldest daughter's birthday. Okay, whose birthday is it? Let's see if we can see. Is somebody going to blow out candles? I see candles, I think.Who…the eldest daughter’s birthday…

10:25

I mean, I have to imagine that the dark haired woman must be the eldest daughter.  Um, but it's interesting that she gets a name, Ornella. 

10:49

Oh, unless Assunta is Cécile’s youngest daughter.

10:56

Maybe it’s the point of view that changes… Cécile 's husband's family’s orange grove. Oh, I don’t know.

11:09

Are the lemons coming? Just the lemons, where are the lemons?

11:22

I don’t know. He’s still alive. Maybe the name days is a religious something and that’s why I don’t know about it.

11:26

Oh, what a beautiful, beautiful shot. Oh. Oh, the blur in the background. Oh, it's so beautiful. That magenta and the yellow. I don't think anybody has ever made yellow look so beautiful before.

12:11 

Cécile’s children. Ok. So these are Cécile’s three children. It's so interesting then to think like did when these photographs where taken, did they know that Cecile was ill? Did she die of an illness? Did she die in an accidentsuddenly?

12:35

Leopard print that actually looks like a leopard under him.

12:43

Um, more cakes. Who's eldest daughter's birthday cake. But that's a different cake, it must be a different year.

12:51

Um, this file is going to be so enormous. I don't even know how I'm going to send it to you, but I don't want to stop. I get caught up in the…

13:12

Oh, the beautiful chicken hat.

13:24

At first then it's sort of like a little lime green. It's like the accent colours sort of define a scene.

13:36

This is just so gross and wonderful and I love it.

13:40

Um there are colours in there that should not belong in ice cream.

14:00

Such a double exposure. So beautiful. I can't even see where I don't even see the dog. Oh, wait. Right. Is that the dog? There's the dog.

14:22

Oh, look. I can put it in in my file for long hair and back. Oh, and now it's recorded for posterity. Oh, but there's so many more I need to put in there. Um, I don't know what I will ever do with them. I want a book of long hair from the back. 

14:48

Oh, we're in the lemon grove with the tutu. I love it. I missed the beginning. I don't know why Cécile's daughter is in the lemon grove in in a pink tutu, but the colors are just so beautiful to me here. And the light, these are just, these are so magical to me.

15:15

The sense that like I'm hiding behind the lemon tree watching them there. There are two young men here now. Oh, with a friend. Cécile's children with a friend. Okay. 

15:27

Oh, my goodness, I've gone through the whole thing. Okay, now I have to figure out how to stop the recording. Such a pleasure. Thank you for asking me to do this. What a lovely way to spend a Sunday morning.