Tags: Frans Zwartjes

Tagged content

A homeless mobile cinema vol.5

By Marcos Ortega on Tue, 13/07/2021 - 08:09

A homeless mobile cinema vol.5 This Summer, Pugnant Film Series will be A homeless mobile cinema at the ruins of Athens. Have you noticed that as the cities are getting more and more old, their ruins are remaining young at all? With a prehistoric youth, similar to the material from which the films are made. With this sacred feeling, we will make some screenings of films that we love at some abandoned houses, factories, rivers and places of Athens.
Dates:
Friday, July 16, 2021 - 20:30
Close-Up: In Memoriam: Frans Zwartjes

By Marcos Ortega on Tue, 12/12/2017 - 04:04

Frans Zwartjes passed away on November 18, 2017. He was ninety years old.

Best known for his experimental shorts produced in the 1960s and 70s, Zwartjes was goth before there was such a thing (which the culture has since determinedly undermined). He was the first artist to unlock the potential of the selfie (which the culture has since determinedly undermined), and he was the precursor to the Fassbindian approach to "family" filmmaking (which the culture has since determinedly avoided). Susan Sontag called Zwartjes "the most important experimental filmmaker of his generation", and he has been either cited or ripped off whole-sale by a generation of artists and filmmakers since.

Dates:
Sunday, December 17, 2017 - 19:30
Venue:
Close-Up Cinema - London, Reino Unido
Het Experiment in de Nederlandse Film

de Mol P, Voorhuis N, Driessen H. 1985. Het Experiment in de Nederlandse Film. :36pp.
Frans Zwartjes: The Great Cinema Magician

By Marcos Ortega on Mon, 21/04/2014 - 17:16

Purge and the ICA present the films of Frans Zwartjes in their original 16mm format. Acclaimed as 'the great cinema magician' in his native Holland, and widely considered 'Holland’s preeminent experimental filmmaker', Zwartjes is also a painter, craftsman and musician: a polymath who defies categorisation, following in and ultimately expanding a tradition of great Dutch masters.

Zwartjes creates 'highly stylised, poetically claustrophobic films which achieve a unique level of sensual intimacy in their renditions of sexual and domestic tension, and voyeurism.'

Championed by Susan Sontag ('the most important experimental filmmaker of his time') and Amos Vogel (distributor of Zwartjes’ films in the US), and recently subject to a large retrospective at the Gemeentemuseum Den Haag, this ICA screening is the first time that these films have ever been shown in the UK in their original format.

Dates:
Sunday, May 11, 2014 (All day)
Tuesday, May 20, 2014 (All day)
Venue:
Institute of Contemporary Arts - London, Reino Unido
Black Sun Cinema

By Marcos Ortega on Mon, 23/07/2012 - 16:09
Black Sun Cinema: A Day of Experimental Film
Sunday, August 12 2012, 13:30h
Triskel Christchurch, Tobin St.,Cork, Ireland

Presented in association with Triskel Christchurch, Black Sun, Cork's weirdo/outer limits music/film event, is presenting a day of unsettling experimental film, a host of rare cinematic shadows flickering mysteriously at the darker fringes of the mind. On the afternoon of Sunday August 12th, adventurous souls seeking haven from the harsh summer light will find sanctuary in Triskel’s Christchurch Cinema as three programmes of hauntingly dreamlike avant-garde visions fall through the church’s muffled darkness to take possession of all present:

American underground legend James Fotopoulos’ feature The Nest (2003) “offers up a bleak and cryptically funny assault on suburban anomie… Fotopoulos creeps around the edges of character and drama, conjuring moods of paranoia and dread that suggest the carefully ordered routines of daily life are a kind of opiate administered by sinister forces. Shooting in harsh 16mm color, Fotopoulos renders The Nest in a typically Spartan, forbidding style that makes it seem as though he is some extraterrestrial visitor photographing humans for the first time.” (Scott Foundas, Variety) Ideal mind-warping viewing for admirers of David Lynch who think they’ve seen everything…

Frans Zwartjes is arguably Holland’s preeminent experimental filmmaker. His highly stylised, poetically claustrophobic films achieve a unique level of sensual intimacy in their renditions of sexual and domestic tension, and voyeurism. These wordless works draw on performance art but are equally distinguished by their oneiric visuals, disconcerting editing rhythms and hypnotically minimal sound design. Once Zwartjes has caressed the surface of your eyeballs, you will never see cinema in the same way again. Black Sun will present a mini-retrospective of five of his most accomplished short films from the late ‘60s and early ‘70s.

And three of Ireland’s most uncompromising contemporary experimental filmmakers, Rouzbeh Rashidi, Dean Kavanagh and Black Sun film programmer Maximilian Le Cain will be on hand to present a series of their more disturbing short films. Strange atmospheres, tense self-portraits, troubled meditations on the ghostly power of cinema itself… Filmmaking at its most eerie and obliquely personal.
Category:
Events