Do you feel safe? This is the question posed to several black women throughout “The Giverny Document” – directed by US artist and filmmaker Ja’Tovia M. Gary, debuting at Curtas – and one that echoes over the entirety of the film. The movie uses and reorganizes different visual elements to put them in dialog with each other and raise new questions from a current perspective. Nina Simone’s live performance at the 1976 Montreux Jazz Festival is sublime, but when the film alternates between her and the images of despair recorded on the phone of Philando Castile’s girlfriend, moments after his assassination by the police, or archival footage of black activists’ statements, or yet interviews with different generations of women made on the streets of Harlem, all these elements come together to create a powerful commentary on contemporary times. Ja’Tovia M. Gary also adds unlikely images filmed at Monet’s garden in Giverny, in which she wanders through the idyllic landscapes, reinforcing, as a result, a certain sense of loss of control over her own destiny, of being unable to act upon reality other than through art. (JA)