Xcèntric: December 2009 screenings

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Xcentric December 09Xcèntric: December 2009 screenings
Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona
Montalegre, 5 - Barcelona, Spain

Gustav Deutsch, Andy Warhol, Nam June Paik, Dick Higgins, Chieko Shiomi, John Cavanaugh, James Riddle, George Maciunas, Yoko Ono, Wolf Vostell, Paul Sharits, George Brech, Robert Watts, Pieter Vanderbiek, Joe Jones, Eric Andersen, Alyson Knowles, Jeff Perkins, Wolf Vostell, Albert Fine, George Landow, Paul Sharits, John Cale, Peter Kennedy, Mike Parr, Ben Vautier, students Aula Xcèntric, Santiago Fillol and Lucas Vermal.

Thursday December 3, 20h Gustav Deutsch
Thursday December 3, 21.45h El Aullido [The Howling], the latest film by the artist Frederic Amat, based on an original screenplay by Cabrera Infante
Sunday December 6 Andy Warhol’s fixed gaze (see below for detailed schedule)
Sunday December 13, 18.30h Outside the format: Fluxus
Wednesday December 16 Special session: Xcentric shows off local talent
Thursday December 17, 20h Outside the format: Fluxus II

All screenings will be in the original version with Catalan subtitles and film format (16/35 mm) unless indicated otherwise. The CCCB reserves the right to modify the programme for reasons of force majeure. Screenings in the Auditorium. Limited capacity. Punctuality is requested.

 

Thursday December 3, 20h
Gustav Deutsch

Following on from the famous first chapters of Film Ist (1-6) / (7-12), made between 1996 and 2002, Gustav Deutsch presents the latest instalment of his project in progress: based on Godard’s idea (“all you need to make a film is a girl and a gun”), Deutsch explores the narrative myths and the foundations of the cinema, its erotica, seduction and beauty. The materials are found or forgotten footage “of the first four and a half decades of cinema”, salvaged from 11 archives around the world: pornographic, scientific and propagandistic images from fiction and documentary that come together in the musical composition of a “film drama in five acts”. The theory and the art of cinema are juxtaposed—images, pieces of music, excerpts from Homer, Sappho and Plato—in a poetics of appropriation, manipulation and recontextualization that recounts the Great History (Genesis, Paradise, Eros, Thanatos, Symposium) and its reflection in short, original narratives of the cinema and the world: love, eroticism, desire and death.

- Film Ist. A Girl and a Gun, Gustav Deutsch. Austria, 2009, 93’, 35 mm

Thursday December 3, 21.45h
El Aullido [The Howling]

“In El Aullido, Guillermo Cabrera Infante evokes the peculiar setting of the village of Gibara, in the Cuban province of Oriente, where he was born in 1929 and which he left at the age of 12 to move with his family to Havana. In El Aullido, the only light is that of the cold sulphur moon and its shadows, and the only sound is that of howling, running through this nocturnal film of desolate images in which we perceive a mosaic of scenes in a surprising premonition of drift and its tragic fate on the shores of a blackened sea.
In El Aullido, viewers hear the legend told by an old domino player and written on signs which, like inserted short dialogues, occupy the screen: ‘When a dog howled late on a moonlit night, it was because it could see something, and if anyone went up to the dog and collected two tears from its eyes and put them in his own, he would see what the dog saw, but not live to tell the tale.’
In El Aullido, the desire to see another light, despite the risk of losing one’s life, is materialized, inviting the viewer’s eyes to witness a final scene of blazing, pendular presence.” - Frederic Amat

- El Aullido, Frederic Amat. Spain, 2009, 22 min, video (premiere in Barcelona)

Sunday December 6
Andy Warhol’s fixed gaze

This double programme, shown simultaneously in two spaces (Foyer and Auditorium), presents two pieces from the little-known but oft quoted film production of Andy Warhol. Empire, a point of reference and a vital part of his first cinematographic phase, is screened in the foyer. Warhol anchored the camera to show us the Empire State Building, which acquires a phantasmagorical appearance produced by the hypnotic flickering of the screening, the result of projecting the film at a slower speed than it was filmed at. Based on the idea of the intent, fixed gaze and materialized by the mechanical device that is the film camera, the film has no sound except the rhythmic internal mechanism of the projector.
In the auditorium, the programme is completed by the pivotal film Outer and Inner Space, with the mythical Edie Sedgwick as the absolute lead in the clear predecessor of what was to be his best-known film, The Chelsea Girls (1966), made a year later. This work, conceived to be shown on one or two screens, was Warhol’s first multiscreening experience.

- Empire, Andy Warhol. USA, 1964, 485’, b/w, silent, 16 mm FOYER, 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. Free admission
- Outer and Inner Space, Andy Warhol, 1965, USA, 33’, b/w, sound, double screen, two projectors, 16 mm (24 fps), AUDITORIUM, 6 p.m. and 7 p.m.

Sunday December 13, 18.30h
Outside the format: Fluxus

The Fluxus movement, informally organized by Georges Maciunas, came into being between 1961 and 1962. With its origins in Dadaism and centring round the figure of John Cage, it combines music, the plastic and visual arts, literature and performance art. These two sessions present the most comprehensive anthology of the Fluxus films, comprising pieces of very varied duration made between 1963 and 1970 by such disparate artists as Nam June Paik, Maciunas himself, John Cavanaugh, Yoko Ono, Robert Watts and Paul Sharits. The films can be seen as explorations of art, creation, material, time and, most especially, the cinematographic image itself, and also represent an exceptional sample of a movement which, though denying its historicity, can be seen as the last major avant-garde manifestation of the 20th century. “Fluxus existed before it was given a name and still exists today, as a form, a principle and a way of working” (Dick Higgins).

Fluxfilm Anthology Part I (16 mm, 60’)
- Fluxfilm No. 1: Zen For Film (1964), Nam June Paik
- Fluxfilm No. 2: Invocation of Canyons and Boulders (1966), Dick Higgins
- Fluxfilm No. 3: End After 9 (1966), George Maciunas
- Fluxfilm No. 4: Disappearing Music For Face (1966), Chieko Shiomi
- Fluxfilm No. 5: Blink (1966), John Cavanaugh
- Fluxfilm No. 6: 9 Minutes (1966), James Riddle
- Fluxfilm No. 7: 10 Feet (1966), George Maciunas
- Fluxfilm No. 8: 1000 Frames (c. 1966), George Maciunas
- Fluxfilm No. 9: Eyeblink (1966), Yoko Ono
- Fluxfilm No. 10: ENTRANCE to EXIT (1966), George Brecht
- Fluxfilm No. 11: Trace #22, Robert Watts
- Fluxfilm No. 12: Trace No. 23 (1966), Robert Watts
- Fluxfilm No. 13: Trace No. 24 (1966), Robert Watts
- Fluxfilm No. 14: One (1966), Yoko Ono
- Fluxfilm No. 15: Eye Blink (1966), Yoko Ono

Wednesday December 16

Special session: Xcentric shows off local talent

- Cinema Reinvented. Xcentric Workshop 09, 105’, video
Screening of the short films made by participants in Xcentric’s 2009 Workshop, “Cinema Reinvented”. The pieces are the product of re-editing films from the Xcentric Archive: Cinema without a Camera presents possible (re)interpretations of the archive and an ABC of the cinematographic art
Free admission

- Ich Bin Enric Marco. Santiago Fillol, Lucas Vermal, Spain, 2009, 100’, video
Former president of the foremost Spanish association of deportees, Enric Marco, sets out to put his past straight, on a car journey to Germany that leads to Flossenbürg concentration camp. Two years previously, a historian proved that Enric Marco was not the Resistance member he claimed to be and that the experiences in the concentration camp that had been related for years on television were invented.
Presentation and debate with the directors after the screening.

Thursday December 17, 20h
Outside the format: Fluxus II

Fluxfilm Anthology Part II (16 mm, 60’)
- Fluxfilm No. 16: Four, Yoko Ono
- Fluxfilm No. 17: 5 O’Clock in the Morning (1966), Pieter Vanderbiek
- Fluxfilm No. 18: Smoking (1966), Joe Jones
- Fluxfilm No. 19: Opus 74, version 2 (1966), Eric Andersen
- Fluxfilm No. 20: ARTYPE (1966), George Maciunas
- Fluxfilm No. 21: (untitled) (1966), Alyson Knowles
- Fluxfilm No. 22: Shout (1966), Jeff Perkins.
- Fluxfilm No. 23: Sun in Your Head (1963), Wolf Vostell
- Fluxfilm No. 24: Readymade (1966), Albert Fine
- Fluxfilm No. 25: The Evil Faerie (1966), George Landow
- Fluxfilm No. 26-28: Sears Catalogue 1-3; Dots 1 & 3; Wrist Trick; Unrolling Event, Paul Sharits
- Fluxfilm No. 29: Word Movie (1966), Paul Sharits
- Fluxfilm No. 30: Dance (1966), Albert Fine
- Fluxfilm No. 31: Police Car (1966?), John Cale
- Fluxfilm No. 36: Fluxfilm No. 36 (1970), Peter Kennedy and Mike Parr
- Fluxfilm No. 37: Fluxfilm No. 37 (1970), Peter Kennedy and Mike Parr
- Fluxfilm No. 38: Je ne vois rien Je n’entends rien Je ne dis rien (1966), Ben Vautier
- Fluxfilm No. 39: La traverse du port de Nice à la nage (1963), Ben Vautier
- Fluxfilm No. 40: Faire un effort (1969), Ben Vautier
- Fluxfilm No. 41: Regardez-moi cela suffit (1962), Ben Vautier

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