desistfilm
Artículos

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.

LEER MÁS »
2022.01.18
Eng

BETTE GORDON: THE ARTIST THAT PAINTS IMAGES WITH LIGHT

By Víctor Paz Morandeira

American filmmaker Bette Gordon was in the spotlight in 2020 due to the recent restoration of her cult film Variety (1983), which found an obstacle in its way to theaters in the COVID-19 pandemic. Fortunately Play-Doc International Film Festival (Tui, Spain) gave us the opportunity this year to discover this gem on the big screen. The story depicts the life of a young woman who works in a porn theater in Manhattan selling tickets. Not only does the film subvert the traditional idea of female representation, but it also shows hidden unconventional human landscapes of New York by having the protagonist follow a mysterious client around the city. Gordon inverts the Madeleine-like stereotype of the beauty that exists only for the pleasure of the male gaze in a very playful way, delivering a feminist film – profoundly influenced by Laura Mulvey’s essays put into practice – that does not feel militant at all.

LEER MÁS »
2021.10.18
Eng

KIM KNOWLES: “PHOTOCHEMICAL FILM CAN BRING ABOUT A NEW KIND OF ETHICAL OR ENVIRONMENTAL CONSCIOUSNESS”

By Tomáš Hudák

Despite film becoming a predominantly digital medium in the 21st century, photochemical film has not disappeared completely. There is still a vibrant scene of experimental cinema around it that doesn’t value analogue film for its past glories but focuses on how it can speak to our present and help us reflect on contemporary issues like climate change. Newly established artist-run labs and collectives are therefore not only an expression of artistic ambitions or aesthetical priorities, but can be understood as part of wider social and political movements.

LEER MÁS »
2021.10.14
Eng

GDYNIA POLISH FILM FESTIVAL – ON THE OUTSIDE LOOKING IN

By Irina Trocan

Although my first visit to Gdynia was a distant seven years ago – for the 2014 edition of the Polish Film Festival –, the largest film industry event in Poland has always left me feeling like a bit of an outsider, and I don’t mean this as a complaint. The country’s film production is much higher and more diverse than most of its East European neighbors, to the point where it is quite difficult even for Polish film critics to keep up with new releases – thus, the main competition of the Gdynia festival is a welcome selection.

LEER MÁS »
2021.10.01
Al Este de Lima

JESSICA HAUSNER: HUMOR IS A WAY TO COPE WITH THE UNCERTAINTY OF LIFE

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.

LEER MÁS »
2021.08.02
Cannes

CANNES – QUINZAINE DES RÉALISATEURS 2021: TRAIN AGAIN BY PETER TSCHERKASSKY

By José Sarmiento

Peter Tscherkassky’s latest masterpiece Train Again (2021) is a magnificent work of synthesis: of the history of cinema, of cinema as a spectacle, of the anxiety of industrialization, of the unveiling of cinema apparatus, of the possibilities and expansion of structural cinema. Dedicated to his good friend and structural filmmaker extraordinaire, Kurt Kren, Tscherkassky shares the same impulses of the work he’s homaging.

LEER MÁS »
2021.07.21
Eng

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).

LEER MÁS »
2021.06.21
Artículos

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.

LEER MÁS »
2021.06.21
desistfilm

JANIE GEISER: “I LIKE TO BE INVOLVED IN WORK THAT ALLOWS MY CURIOSITY TO GET IN PLAY”

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.

LEER MÁS »
2021.05.11
Eng

ANTONI PINENT: “CELLULOID PRODUCES PHYSIOLOGICAL SENSATIONS THAT DIGITAL DOES NOT CONTAIN”

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.

LEER MÁS »
2021.05.01

desistfilm

Directors: 
Mónica Delgado Ch.
José Sarmiento Hinojosa 

ISSN 2311-7451
© Desistfilm 2020
Lima Perú. All rights reserved.

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