By José Sarmiento and Mónica Delgado
As part of the recent edition of the Al Este de Lima festival, the Austrian filmmaker Jessica Hausner gave a masterclass, where she delved into her work before a Peruvian audience. In this framework, we were able to talk with her about her motivations, her staging and her female leading characters.
By José Sarmiento Hinojosa
Decoding Courtney Stephens’ work is an apt term for the ideological (the ideological as the immanent referent of the platonic realm) transit involved in being presented with her films. Indeed, being a spectator of films like Mixed Signals or Ida Western Exile, implies being open to the multiple poetic relations between signifier and signified, a process that achieves a particular transcendence through contemplation and montage.
By José Sarmiento Hinojosa
I would like to recover some words with a previous exchange with Louisiana-born artist Janie Geiser, which aptly reflect on how I still feel about the work of this wonderful American experimental filmmaker, author of masterpieces of collage cinema such as The Red Book (1994), Ghost Algebra (2010), Valeria Street (2018), Reverse Shadow (2019), among many others. Janie also works in installation and performance with expanded cinema and puppets, and co-created Automata, an experimental film and puppet theater in Los Angeles.
By José Sarmiento Hinojosa & Mónica Delgado
Over the course of four years, the perspectives over the thinking process of filmmaker extraordinaire John Gianvito have remained solid, but it’s fundamental to read his ideas through the passage of time, contemplating the current moment of the first part of this interview, in 2017 (amidst the Trump administration), and the second one, in 2021 (in its aftermath), on the making of his latest documentary Her Socialist Smile (2020), about the activist, socialist side of Helen Keller. Our 2017 interview was meant to be included in a cinema and politics dossier that never saw the light of day, but nonetheless, perfectly articulated Gianvito’s political ideas and filmmaking ethos as a catalyst of the problems he saw of post-colonialism issues, the exercise of capitalism and American imperialism and its aftermath in its own history and the history of countries as the Philippines.
By José Sarmiento and Mónica Delgado
Almost at the end of last year, Spanish filmmaker, curator and teacher, currently based in Los Angeles, Antoni Pinent premiered his new work “i STiLL BELiEVE iN CELLULOiD” [aka ‘film beyond film’] or iSBiC (2020), a series of short films (or capsules as he calls them) as part of a multimedia project that reflects on the practice and validity of experimental cinema, art and celluloid as a subject.
By José Sarmiento Hinojosa
We recently found Allieurs, Partout (Elsewhere, Everywhere, 2020) by Isabelle Ingold and Vivianne Perelmuter, premiered at Rotterdam Film Festival last year. Immediately, the unique qualities of the work of Isabelle and Vivianne permeated our screens.
By Mónica Delgado
Since her final project, Son de Artesa (2006-2007), Mexican filmmaker Sandra Luz López Barroso showed her interest in reflecting personal and social dynamics within the Afro-descendant communities in her country. A few days ago, she won the award for best film in the Now Mexico section at Ficunam Film Festival competition, with her first feature film El Compromiso de las sombras, along with Los fundadores, by Diego Hernández. In this first film, she returns to the registry of a territory that she has known for more than fifteen years, but through Lizbeth, a trans woman who directs the funeral rituals of several communities in the Costa Chica, an area of Afro-Mexican towns between the states of Guerrero and Oaxaca.
By Alonso Aguilar
Intercutting between sharp body movements and intense dramatic sights, French filmmaker Julien Faraut has retooled the sports documentary format to fit his own pursuits. For him, the subjects of his films aren’t just about their unmatched prowess and unthinkable triumphs, but more so a reflection of their own iconography. We see them through the lens of cinematic time. Their actions are repurposed, reframed and recontextualized, while their narratives leave behind the restrictive realms of representation in favor of the limitless possibilities of true expression.
By Mónica Delgado
Colombian Pablo Álvarez-Mesa is one of the figures of contemporary documentary filmmaking in his country. With a work expanded from the hybridity of documentary and non-fiction, Álvarez-Mesa presented his film Bicentenario at the virtual edition of Forum Expanded at the Berlin International Film Festival. His films have been seen on different occasions at festivals such as IFFR, Visions du Reél and Rencontres Internationales du Documentaire de Montréal. He has a Master’s in Film Production from Concordia University and experience as a director, cameraman, and editor. Among his works we have Presidio Modelo (2009), Jelena’s Song (2010) and La Pesca (2017).
By Ivonne Sheen and Viola Varotto
Zhang Mengqi is a Chinese documentary filmmaker and performer who has developed a series of Self-portraits in her father’s village, during a period of 11 years now, situated 47 kms from Suizhou city, a distance from which it carries its name.
Directors:
Mónica Delgado Ch.
José Sarmiento Hinojosa
ISSN 2311-7451
© Desistfilm 2020
Lima Perú. All rights reserved.