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NEVER-ENDING MUSIC – GERMAN LANGUAGE AND LANDSCAPE IN THE FILMS OF BERNHARD SALLMANN

by Claudia Siefen-Leitich

Within one’s writing, speaking, and ideally within one’s daily practical life, to place one’s words, pauses, pitches, and even omissions purposefully and communicatively can by now be called a luxury. Defining one’s own character through one’s own language, making it visible and possibly also accessible to a certain extent, is a luxury. And we recognise each other without wanting to form an elitist attitude, but for the sake of simplicity: I say what I mean, and therefore I also mean what I say.

2022.07.30

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WHAT IS AN EMOTION: NOTES ON JUST BE THERE BY CASPAR PFAUNDLER

by Claudia Siefen-Leitich

Emotions run parallel to bodily processes, signify the interpretation of identified and replicated bodily states and are externally recognisable by third parties. The approach has attempted to interpret emotions in purely neuronal and physiological terms. It should be noted, however, that an original bodily process is not necessary to talk about emotions.

2022.04.26

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DURAS/GODARD DIALOGUES: I KNEW HER FOR TWO OR THREE YEARS

By Dina Pokrajac

Dialogues between Marguerite Duras and Jean-Luc Godard represent a starting point and a useful landmark for a true evaluation of the relationship between the written word and the image. In one interview from 1997, Godard said that he knew Duras “for two or three years”, evoking the title of his film Two or Three Things I Know about Her. Godard and Duras were meeting for a few years to discuss the subject of their interest: a radical dichotomy between image and sound, portraying the unportrayable (such as concentration camps and incest), as well as childhood and television.

2022.04.11

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A FEMININE MANIFESTO: ASPARAGUS, AN INTRICATE VISUAL POEM

By Dhia Dhibi

A red-heeled leg penetrating through a blood-colored rotating circle ushering a green serpent that slithers spiraling around it with a twisted manner, this is the first sequence that welcomes us to embark and immerse in the erotic and surreal experience of the 18 minutes animated masterpiece by Suzanne Pitt, Asparagus (1979).

2022.04.04

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THE WOUND AS A DISPLACEMENT: ON NICOLAS KLOTZ AND ÉLISABETH PERCEVAL’S NOUS DISONS RÉVOLUTION

By José Sarmiento Hinojosa

Before they reached the Negro they stopped, because he began to sing. They could see him, naked and mud-caked, sitting on a log, singing. They squatted silently a short distance away, until he finished. He was chanting something in his own language, his face lifted to the rising sun. His voice was clear, full, with a quality wild and sad.

William Faulkner – Red Leaves

2022.03.24

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THE ENERGIES OF MARA MATTUSCHKA

by Claudia Siefen-Leitich

With her seemingly never-ending energy, there is a moment when you experience the painter and filmdirector Mara Mattuschka in peace and in almost frozen concentration, and that is while eating in a restaurant. As a performance artist, painter, author, actress, professor and even singer, Mara Mattuschka surprises her audience time and again and is one of the figureheads of Austrian avant-garde cinema. The body is at the centre of Mattuschka’s work, quite conscious in its impulsiveness and defectiveness, through which the unconscious seems to burst forth and leap at us. If one allows it to. Born in Sofia in 1959, she studied painting and animation with Maria Lassnig at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna, but began to explore the medium of film at an early age.

2022.01.18

En español

DESISTFILM 2021 FILM ROUND-UP: THE LISTS/LAS LISTAS

From Desistfilm, we continue with our commitment to continue to make visible a cinema supported by online festivals above all, and the mission of this type of list is to share this appreciation for a cinema that resists and that continues to transform us. Here is the list of collaborators and friends of Desistfilm, who this year accompanied us in some way, either with their texts, appreciations or other forms of love for cinema.

2021.12.31

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DESISTFILM 2021 TOP 10: THE TALLY

After counting all the votes from our different friends, staff and collaborators from around the world, these are the best films of 2021.

2021.12.31

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AESTHETICS OF A PERSONAL LANDSCAPE: FAT CHANCE BY STEPHEN BROOMER

José Sarmiento Hinojosa

I would like to make a case for the aesthetics present in Stephen Broomer’s appropriation films, but particularly in his latest film to date, Fat Chance (2020). One might be inclined to appreciate this work as a continuation of the possibilities for found footage in experimental cinema, following in the steps of other greats like Bill Morrison and Peter Tscherkassky (and yes, there is something to say -aesthetically and in its poetics*- about certain similarities between the film, and, let’s say, others like Outer Space or Light is Calling).

2021.06.21

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NOTES ON 2551.01 BY NORBERT PFAFFENBICHLER

by Claudia Siefen-Leitich

“Touch“, “shame”, and “disgust” have a multiple meaning in film. Not only do the protagonists touch each other, but the film touches the viewers. Trapped in their cinema seats, captivated by the events on the screen and integrated into the identity machine of cinema, the individual separates himself or herself in order to be involuntarily touched by the so called heroes.

2021.06.21