TIFF Wavelenghts

Film Festival Reports

TIFF 2018. WAVELENGTHS: FALLEN ARCHES, FAINTING SPELLS, WALLED UNWALLED

By Nicolás Carrasco

A few months ago, I had the chance to watch in NY for the first time, a film by Simon Liu. Projected in four 16mm projectors, Highview (2017), impressed me for its capacity of formally combining two concepts that refer back to, for example, Mekas, but with a completely different language. Liu’s work, if well could be identified with any of those “styles”, explores its own roads, completely unseen and singular.

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Críticas

TIFF 2018. WAVELENGTHS: FALLEN ARCHES, FAINTING SPELLS, WALLED UNWALLED

Por Nicolás Carrasco

Hace unos meses, en Nueva York, tuvimos la oportunidad de ver por primera vez una película de Simon Liu. Proyectada en cuatro proyectores de 16mm, Highview (2017) nos impresionó mucho por su capacidad de combinar formalmente la abstracción del cine lírico con los momentos íntimos del diario fílmico, dos conceptos que remiten, por ejemplo, a Mekas, pero con un lenguaje completamente distinto. El trabajo de Liu, si bien podría identificarse con cualquiera de estos “estilos”, explora sus propios caminos, completamente inéditos y singulares.

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Film Festival Reports

TIFF 2018. WAVELENGTHS: POLLY ONE BY KEVIN JEROME JEFFERSON

By Mónica Delgado

Unlike other experimental filmmakers that have shown a fascination for the eclipse as a metaphor of the auscultation of cinematographic support in in its materiality (a reality superimposed to another, like the position of the stars), in Polly One, Kevin Jerome Everson captures the intensity itself of this phenomena of the skies to take it to the possibility to become real spectators of an event of this nature that it’s barely intervened.

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Críticas

TIFF 2018. WAVELENGTHS: POLLY ONE DE KEVIN JEROME JEFFERSON

Por Mónica Delgado

A diferencia de otros cineastas experimentales que han mostrado fascinación por el eclipse como metáfora de la auscultación misma del soporte cinematográfico en su materialidad (una realidad superpuesta a otra, como la interposición de los astros), en Polly One, Kevin Jerome Everson capta la intensidad misma de este fenómeno celeste para liarlo a la posibilidad de ser espectadores reales de un suceso de esta naturaleza que apenas es intervenido.

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Film Festival Reports

TIFF 2018. WAVELENGTHS: ADA KALEH BY HELENA WITTMANN AND SIRA BY ROLLA TAHIR

By Aldo Padilla

The history of the extinct island of Ada Kaleh reminds us of the background story of Jia Zhang-Ke’s Still life: a hydroelectric plant whose construction destroys the surrounding towns, with the excuse of the unlimited need for energy. The case of this Turkish island had a similar fate with its disappearance during the 70’s. The idea of ??a ghost or a submerged island is represented by Wittman in the beginning of her short film with a wall where the humidity has left traces of a kind of map with the remains of paint that cling to the surface, while a mandarin voice talks about people in search of territory in a poem. The invented map of an imaginary island, the pccult map of a submerged island, with people floating in its nonexistence, a map that seems to show countries that do not welcome the wondering ghosts, because they cannot be determined.

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Críticas

TIFF 2018. WAVELENGTHS: FAUSTO DE ANDREA BUSSMANN

Por Pablo Gamba

Fausto recibió este año una de las dos menciones especiales del jurado en la sección Cineastas del Presente, en el Festival de Locarno. Es el segundo largometraje de Andrea Bussmann y el primero que dirige sola. En el anterior, Tales of two who dreamt (2016), estrenado en el Festival de Berlín, compartió esa tarea Nicolás Pereda, esposo de la realizadora canadiense.

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Film Festival Reports

TIFF 2018. WAVELENGTHS: BLUE BY APICHATPONG WEERASETHAKUL & ARENA BY BJÖRN KÄMMERER

By Aldo Padilla

Insomnia can be defined as an intermediate state between dream and reality. Apíchatpong builds or simulates this scenario through tableaux that slightly change the dream, the possibility of voluntarily changing what we see in this intermediate state, part of the will of staying in that limbo. The lead character of Blue turns around in a bed while there’s a flame that extends through her, but without burning her, an illusion generated by a transparent screen that seems to ward off the spectator from the privacy of the inaccessible dream. The fire moves forward and the screens keep changing, while Apichatpong transposes the ideas of his cinema and his installations in five minutes, where the color blue associated to a peaceful dream, appears sporadically to remind us that we’re in the night, something that counterpoises the crepuscular passages of the exchangeable paintings.

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