TV report for broadcaster – Glass Maker Matteo Gonet

One Shoot Day in the Glass Manufactory – A Portrait of Glass Artist Matteo Gonet

For Deutsche Welle's euromaxx magazine, Basiliscus Film produced a 4:30-minute artist portrait of Swiss glass artist Matteo Gonet – one of the most sought-after glass artists in Europe. Author and director Stephanie Drescher developed the concept, wrote the treatment and oversaw the entire production on location. The shoot took place in Münchenstein near Basel.

The dramaturgical challenge: in a single shoot day, the film needed to convey not only a fascinating craft, but also the person behind it – and a project of almost unimaginable scale. When we arrived, Gonet's ten-strong team was working across 1,200 square metres on 40 different commissions simultaneously. The centrepiece: around 1,000 gold-and-glass spheres for 49 fountains in the grounds of the Palace of Versailles – designed by French artist Jean-Michel Othoniel.

What We Set Out to Show and Tell

The report was structured across seven scenes, following Matteo Gonet's work through the various production processes of his manufactory.

Our camera team accompanied Matteo through the glass-blowing process: loading the blowpipe with raw glass, heating it in the 1,200-degree furnace, blowing it into a hand-crafted wooden mould, and shaping the glowing material as steam and hissing fill the air. We filmed the gold-leafing of the finished spheres – each weighing between 4 and 8 kilos before being mounted onto stainless steel poles. The fountain elements for Versailles will stand between 1.50 and 1.70 metres tall and be installed across roughly 100 square metres within a grove of trees – Othoniel's design inspired by the ballet steps of the Sun King Louis XIV.

A highlight of the shoot day: French artist Philippe Parreno came to the manufactory in person to discuss his latest project – a lamp edition whose first prototypes Gonet had already produced. We were able to accompany and document that conversation between glass artist and client as it happened.

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