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curated programs
Klaipeda, 2024, 14th August
Suspaustas Laikas ‘24 Experimental Film and Arts Festival
This program is curated by Vilnius-based cine-artist Miklós (Miki) Ambrózy.
Ecopoetics I
Begin by Observing with Your Fingers - DialoguesUsing cinema as a form of conversation, this program suggests the
possibility that the human is not the center of life, nor conscious of the
systems it claims to rule over. We seem to believe that language is what
keeps humans apart from other life forms, alongside the superior
complexity of human consciousness. These two have provided us with
power to alter place and matter. Yet, as it is becoming increasingly clear,
the environment forms us as much as we form it, if not more. Enter poetics.
The films in this program are arranged as couplets - a pair of successive
lines of verse, typically rhyming and of the same length. Each film asks
questions that the one after answers or complicates further. The
filmmakers’ projects begin to move away from representation and
imitation, towards increasing complexity through layering and the
parameters of cinema. Staging, direct interventions on film, multiple
exposures, optical or contact printing are all deployed as familiar rituals of
the genre.
The duets inquire into the ways of being of narrative (Deren - Pryce),
lyrical materiality (Brakahage - Doing), contact (Foglia - Canapa and
Leszez), correspondence (Beauvais - Lowder) and the everyday (Wang).
The question to ask ourselves at the end of all this is: how has this program
of ecopoetic experimental cinema offered us an alternative way of looking
and being in the world?
Program Notes
On Narrative
Stimulus:
The Witch’s Cradle, by Maya Deren
1944 / 16mm / b&w / silent / 1S / 12' 30
“THE WITCH'S CRADLE is an unfinished Maya Deren film made in the Guggenheim Gallery during a surrealist "Art of this Century" exhibit. It was assembled long after her death by staffers within the preservation department at Anthology Film Archives.” (David Lewis).
Cast: Pajorita Matta and Marcel Duchamp.
Response:
Pwdre Ser the Rot of Stars, by Charlotte Pryce
2019 / 16mm / color-b&w / sound / 1S / 6' 35
The film depicts an encounter with a mysterious, luminous, electrical substance. Inspired equally by medieval accounts of visionary experiences and by 19th century photography of the invisible, PWDRE SER joins Kirlian photography with hand-processed images. "Pwdre ser" is the Welsh name for a mythical substance that has been observed by many since the 1400s.
On Lyrical Matter (screening on 16mm)
Stimulus:
Stan Brakhage, THE EARTH SONG OF THE CRICKET
1999 / 16mm / color / silent / 1S / 3' 00
This is a hand-painted work whose shapes are scratched on black leader filled with varieties of color: the resultant shapes tend to suggest insect-like movements, a rub of bent-lines together suggesting the electric hind legs of the cricket, whose movements engender (thru elaborate step-printing) quick pull-backs within frames of the film, so contrived as to create visual agitron lines within the zoom-like effect whose rhythm
approximates a cricket's repetitive sound. This effect is echoed ephemerally later in the film as it nears its end of muted pull-down shapes and approximations of the earth-clod-likenesses and/or autumnal leaf-likenesses which begin the film.
Response:
Babbler, Fairy and Thrush by Karel DOING
2022-2023 / 16mm / b&w / sound / 1S / 3' 44
An unfiltered stream of perception: small objects and grand panoramas appear simultaneously. The certainties of near and far, detail and overview, inside and outside are deliberately thrown into confusion. Aided by in-camera superimposition and travelling mattes, a near abstract experience is created. Sunlight filters through semi-transparent surfaces, while small holes and cracks allow the light to travel unrestrained.
On contact
Stimulus:
Negative/Positive Film, by Federica FOGLIA
2023 / 16mm / b&w / sound / 1S / 14' 22
Camera-less film collage composed of layers of 16mm erotic films from the '20s, '40s and '70s, interspersed with nature documentaries. This abstraction merges both the black and white film positive and its black and white negative counterpart – onto the same film base. The film presents itself as a remediation of female bodies dislodged from their original erotic context and torn from their male co-protagonists. The female body slowly merges with the body of the insects.
Response:
Bosco by Stefano CANAPA & Lucie LESZEZ
2023 / 16mm / b&w / silent / 1S / 8' 00
Three filmmakers (L. Leszez, J. Lainé et S. Canapa) bring back images of the forest. They are reworked and destructured with the means of the photochemical laboratory. BOSCO is a visual breakthrough punctuated by a contrasted and hypnotic black and white.
On correspondence
Stimulus:
DKR (4395) de Yann BEAUVAIS
1991-2023 / 16mm / coul-n&b / sonore / 1E / 3' 23
Result of a slow decomposition of 16mm prints of QUATR'UN in Recife. One set was scanned frame by frame and cropped to include the perforations. Dissolution of the frame and mimetic representation in time.
Response (on 16mm film):
ForYannFromRose, by Rose LOWDER
2014 / 16mm / color / silent / 1S / 2' 44
“More and more it appears that things in life link up with each other in unforeseeable ways. With this film I wanted to pay homage to yann beauvais for his having, on top of his own work as an artist, against all odds, lack of funds or recognition concerning the field in question, made an important contribution to make known, as much by his writing as by his presenting and distributing, works by other authors. Having followed closely and continuously the frustrating and heroic steps he made, I wanted to conceive a film of a different nature, without problems, a gentle peaceful poem. I found the ideal place with friends on their Italian farm, full of odd and poetic items. One could almost surmise that it was yann’s past tortuous efforts that brought all the way from Brazil a hair running from top to bottom of the entire reel. Nothing could be done. Except to make another film.”
Epilogue
Dust Poetry, by Nan Wang
2013-2014 / 16mm / color / sound / 9' 10
Engrossing combination of 16mm frames with house dust collected by Nan Wang and film clips of insects and plants. The beauty of tiny, surplus materials digitally processed and edited into a hallucinogenic trip. Pulsating soundtrack based on insect and wind sounds.