Film Festival Reports – Page 21

Film Festival Reports

OLHAR DE CINEMA 2018: VALERIA STREET BY JANIE GEISER

By José Sarmiento Hinojosa

After watching most of Janie Geiser’s work for Olhar de Cinema, I came up with the term “steoroscopic artifacts” in search for a proper definition for her cinema that would make me understand what I was watching. It’s not that Geiser’s films are unlike anything I had seen so far (an immediate connection with Rhayne Vermette comes to mind), but it was the particular use of layered images, each one with its own particular significant, (which reminded me of Val Del Omar’s words about his expanded work) that allowed me to coin such a term.

2018.06.25

desistfilm

OLHAR DE CINEMA 2018: JANIE GEISER’S STEREOSCOPIC ARTIFACTS

Not to subvert the proper definition of what stereoscopic is, but meddling with some of the images of Janie Geiser’s oeuvre kept me in incessant agony while trying to get a word that was remarkable enough as to describe her unique language of animation. Stereoscopic is then, an easy (sort of easy) way to describe the transmutation of the multiple overlayed images that recreate this sense of stereo-visual game, a game that is expanded in Geiser’s multiple work as an installation artist, visual artist and performer. I was able to grasp a wide panorama of her film works while covering her program at the last Olhar de Cinema Film Festival.

2018.06.19

(S8)

(S8) MOSTRA DE CINEMA PERIFÉRICO: A BALANCE

By Mónica Delgado

There’s no doubt that (S8) Mostra de Cinema Periférico, in La Coruña, is one of the most important spaces for exhibition of experimental cinema around the world. Each year, its careful programs, the performances, installations and masterclasses, affirm the festival as a space for dialogue and enjoyment, in projections of 8, 16, 35mm or video, which transform the film experience in a survivor, in the middle of an international crisis of projection, distribution and exhibition of films.

2018.06.14

(S8)

(S8) MOSTRA DE CINEMA PERIFÉRICO: TWO EXPERIENCES BY OJOBOCA

By Mónica Delgado

In the latest edition of (S8) Mostra de Cinema Periférico, inside the “Desbordamientos” (Overflows) sections, which contains different performances through live projections, a couple of works of Ojoboca (“Eyemouth”) were presented, a short film and a performance. Ojoboca, formed by Anja Dornieden and Juan David Gonzáles Monroy, based in Berlin, is characterized for the configuration of a fictional world around their films and performances, which provides a rarefied ambiance, which evokes many of the production and exhibition mechanisms of cinema from the nostalgia of phantasmagoria.

2018.06.08

(S8)

(S8) MOSTRA DE CINEMA PERIFÉRICO 2018: CHRIS KENNEDY: DE(RE)CONSTRUCTING A GAZE

By José Sarmiento Hinojosa

Ah, the ways of seeing. Wittgenstein wasn’t alone when he tried taping his window as to recreate a screen into which he would locate a particular element of the landscape before him. Piece of tape after piece of tape slowly framed correctly what the philosopher’s wanted to see, as if creating his own proto-cinema. Tsai would reconvene with these images (knowingly or not) in Visage (2009), when Laetitia Casta, in an attempt to deny her view and obscure her room, would also tape her whole window, in a painstakingly slow shot, which attempted to drain one’s spirit, the mere exercise of blacking out, the loss of sight as a declaration of impossibility. While watching Chris Kennedy’s outstanding program at (S8) Mostra de Cinema Periférico, I came upon his Tape Film (2007), a simple exercise on stock material and the labour of the filmmaker, and immediately I recalled these early images. This would be a proper start to the discovery of this Canadian author and his particular obsession with the human gaze, the ways of perception, the image collages of nature and the edification of stories from different perspectives.

2018.06.05

(S8)

(S8) MOSTRA DE CINEMA PERIFÉRICO 2018: EXILE BY ROBERT TODD AND AS MUCH TIME AS SPACE BY KATJA MATER

By Mónica Delgado

This edition of (S8) Mostra de Cinema Periferico carries the name Lux Algebra, something which defines mostly its entire program dedicated to structural cinema. Paraphrasing the concept by film historian P. Adams Sitney, it’s about a type of simplified cinema of predetermined forms (even of rhythmic patterns or algorithms) where the explorations of nature or film materiality are primal. This is why the fundamental presence of canon structural cinema by Ernie Gerhr or Kurt Kren are exemplary in these days of projections, along other works by younger or posterior filmmakers, than are inspired or revisit their works.

2018.05.31

(S8)

(S8) MOSTRA DE CINEMA PERIFÉRICO 2018: SLAUGHTERHOUSE AND VULTURE (WORK IN PROGRESS) BY PHILIP HOFFMAN

By Mónica Delgado

The first session of Canadian filmmaker Phillip Hoffman at (S8) Mostra de Cinema Periférico in La Coruña, was contundent enough to help us defined his so-called Vulture Aesthetic, a kind of worldview that governs his way of doing and understanding cinema. The figure of the Vulture is not only assumed as a simple metaphor of a being hunting for archival material or “detritus” but also the one that has the capacity of reviving and transforming time through celluloid, re-catch it and recreate it. Or like someone with an acute vision, who isn’t afraid to be attentive to adopt the irruption of the unexpected and the environment, even for a brief period of time, and be part of it.

2018.05.31

(S8)

(S8) MOSTRA DE CINEMA PERIFÉRICO 2018: SHORT FILMS FROM GALICIA

By Mónica Delgado

In Pezas imposibles, Lara and Noa Castro realize an immersion to the materiality of bodies inside the water. Through 14 minutes we’re witnesses of the registry of an inverted submerged camera in a lake where two women dance and swim, in almost all moments with the head on surface. This resource of inversion, allows us to imagine the natural terrain of these bodies, the water, while their heads, breathing outside, seem to be subjected to a type of pressure or torture. Thus, the atmosphere that the young sisters create through this kind of new arrhythmic and unreal dance, points to achieve a total abstraction, despite the cuts, in the nine chapters or fragments that look to give a narrative to this freedom of the female bodies under the water.

2018.05.30

(S8)

(S8) MOSTRA DE CINEMA PERIFÉRICO 2018: THE THINKING IMAGE BY MARÍA RUIDO

By Mónica Delgado

That the ninth edition of (S8) Mostra de Cinema Periférico complemented its program with the Le Paradis expo at Luis Seoane’s Fundation in La Coruña, and at the same time, displayed a selection of works under the title La Imagen que Piensa (The Thinking Image) about the work of visual artist María Ruido, allowed for a lecture about the relation of official history, subjective and personal memory as present motives in this essential filmmaker’s work.

2018.05.30

Cannes

CANNES 2018: A BALANCE

By Mónica Delgado

It’s been over a week since the Golden Palm was awarded to Hirokazu Kore-eda Shoplifters, an event which closed a festival that kept its classics leitmotivs in a low key: miserabilism, cruelty or the overrating of a cinema with messages and big issues had its few peaks. Even if this year the program was better in quality compared to other edition, the jury, presided by Cate Blanchett, was discreet when awarding common themes, like the award given to the unambitious Kore-eda film, a plain family drama without any major stylistic attributes. Point aside was the jury prize to Capharnaum by Libanese filmmaker Nadine Labaki, a fact which confirm that despite the good films that made this a noble edition, remains a liking for the kind of films that look to edify consciences through stories of misery, war and refugees.

2018.05.28